Only the sound of the wind rattling the window panes broke the quiet.

“They didn’t just steal my money,” Jake said, his voice dangerously calm. “They set me up to take the fall for their entire real estate scam.”

“They needed me dead,” Jake added. “Or at least legally dead.”

“If you were dead, the trust would have dissolved, and the liabilities would have been buried with you,” Hayes said.

“And now that I’m back, I’m a threat to their entire operation,” Jake said.

“A sixty-million-dollar operation,” Reyes said, pointing to the total valuation of the Oakridge project on his screen.

“They will do anything to keep you from exposing this,” I said, looking at the door.

“The decryption is finished,” Reyes said, pulling the blue cable out of his tablet.

He handed the black rugged drive back to me.

“Keep this safe,” Reyes said. “It has the original wire signatures, the bank routing numbers, and the forged digital certificates.”

I slipped the drive back into the secret pocket of my diaper bag and zipped it tight.

“What’s our next move?” Jake asked Hayes.