“Do you have any documents from those years?”
“I kept a few copies. I hid them before I was arr*sted.”
She rose slowly and came back with a folded slip of paper.
On it she had written a name and a phone number.
“Samuel Ortiz. He’s a forensic financial investigator. He helped me when I had trouble with my ex-husband. He doesn’t work miracles, but he knows how to find lies hidden in numbers.”
Something shifted inside me.
Not hope.
I’d learned to be careful with hope.
Something smaller and harder.
A place to put my feet.
I called the number the next morning from Dorothy’s kitchen.
He answered on the second ring.
“Ortiz.”
“Mr. Ortiz, my name is Rachel Cooper. Dorothy Lang gave me your number.”
A pause.
“Dorothy Lang still cooks on Thursdays?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then come Thursday. Bring whatever you hid.”
PART 2
I hid the documents in the one place I knew Brian would never look.
