Chapter 1 - The Paper Trail
The coffee in the Tonopah station diner tasted like burnt copper, but it kept the cold out of my bones. Across the booth, Eli was asleep with his head pillowed on his folded jacket, his breathing shallow enough to remind me of the inhaler that had rolled under my father’s tires hours ago. The state trooper, a lean man named Miller who looked like he spent his weekends wrestling steers, slid a yellow legal pad across the formica table.
“Well, Lieutenant,” Miller said, using my old rank with a quiet nod of respect after checking my military ID. “We ran the plates on your father’s truck. It’s registered to a Delaware LLC called Sterling & Vance Holdings. Not your parents’ personal names.”
I traced the rim of my mug. “Sterling & Vance. That’s my father’s corporate shell. He used it to shuffle real estate assets before he supposedly retired.”
“More than real estate,” Miller replied, tapping a pen against the pad. “That LLC filed a change-of-ownership deed on your apartment building in Reno yesterday afternoon. Not an eviction notice. A complete deed transfer. As far as the county recorder’s office is concerned, you haven’t lived there for six months, and the new landlord took possession at midnight.”
The warmth of the coffee vanished. I stared at him. “My apartment? All my records, my service evaluations, my savings passbook—everything is in that safe.”
“Which is why they left you on the highway,” Miller said flatly. “They didn’t just want you out of their hair. They wanted you legally erased before you could check your mail.”
He slid a printed property record across to me. My father’s signature was at the bottom, crisp and arrogant, executed with the fountain pen I had bought him for his sixtieth birthday. But right beneath it was a second signature—one I hadn’t expected to see for another ten years, if ever.
My younger sister, Chloe.
She wasn’t just a beneficiary to whatever financial games my parents were playing. According to the deed stamp, she was the managing director of Sterling & Vance as of three days ago.
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I looked down at Eli, who whimpered softly in his sleep, chasing some cold dream. The anger that had sustained me on the highway hardened into something much colder and heavier. My parents hadn't acted alone in a sudden fit of cruelty. They had built a machine, and Chloe was running the gears.
“Miller,” I said, my voice dropping an octave. “I need a secure line and a rental car. We’re going to Reno.”
