Chapter 13 - Samantha’s Signature
Samantha didn’t run.
Didn’t deny knowing Diane.
She asked Detective Ruiz to remain in the room.
Then said:
“I forged it.”
My chest tightened.
“Why?”
“Lucas asked me to.”
That made no sense.
The document was bait.
Lucas suspected someone inside Baldwin-Gallagher was illegally monitoring county filings.
So Samantha created a fake transfer authorization using a deliberately imperfect version of my signature.
They placed it in a private legal file accessible only to three people.
Lucas.
Samantha.
And Martin Cross.
Forty-eight hours later, Diane had a copy.
That proved Martin was leaking information to her.
The document had no legal effect.
Never filed.
Never endangered my assets.
Diane simply didn’t know that.
“So why did Lucas react surprised in the recording?”
“Because he didn’t expect Diane to show it to him.”
Samantha’s explanation fit.
But trust now required evidence.
She provided it.
Emails between her and Lucas.
Timestamped.
Encrypted originals.
The forgery was part of their trap.
Samantha was cleared.
I apologized.
She shook her head.
“Don’t. You should question everyone now.”
Finally.
Someone understood.
Then investigators analyzed the rest of Lucas’s archive.
His SUV transmitted diagnostic data before the crash.
A stability-control failure appeared eleven minutes after leaving the rest stop.
Martin admitted tampering.
But forensic evidence showed something else.
The system had been altered earlier.
Before Martin touched it.
Martin’s interference worsened a preexisting defect.
Who caused the first sabotage?
Security footage from Lucas’s office garage showed someone near his SUV that afternoon.
Brown dress.
Long light-brown hair.
Courtney.
She was arrested again.
She cried.
“I didn’t touch the car.”
Video showed her kneeling beside it.
“What were you doing?”
“Putting something underneath.”
“What?”
“A tracker.”
“Why?”
“My father told me to.”
The tracker was recovered from wreckage.
She had not sabotaged the vehicle.
Then another figure appeared fourteen minutes later.
Baseball cap.
Maintenance uniform.
Face hidden.
He accessed the front wheel well.
Diane denied sending anyone.
Martin denied it.
Hawthorne denied it.
Who remained?
Natalie watched the footage.
“Pause.”
Ruiz did.
Natalie pointed.
“The watch.”
The disguised person wore a vintage silver watch.
She knew it.
“It belonged to my grandfather.”
“Martin’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Who has it?”
Natalie looked toward Courtney.
Courtney started crying.
“No.”
“Who?”
Natalie whispered:
“Mom gave it to Uncle Daniel.”
Daniel Cross.
Martin’s younger brother.
A man nobody had mentioned because he supposedly died fourteen years earlier.
Another fake death.
Ruiz looked exhausted.
“So Daniel is alive?”
Diane finally broke.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why sabotage Lucas?”
Diane closed her eyes.
“Because Daniel wasn’t protecting Northstar.”
“What was he protecting?”
“Me.”
Daniel had spent decades cleaning up Diane’s problems.
Not because she paid him.
Because he loved her.
Obsessively.
When Lucas threatened exposing Diane, Daniel acted without permission.
He damaged the vehicle.
Martin later tampered with it again.
Two separate acts.
Neither man necessarily intended the exact crash.
Together, they killed Lucas.
Then Ruiz received an alert.
Daniel Cross’s passport had just been used.
Not at an airport.
At the Canadian border.
He wasn’t leaving the United States.
May you like
He was entering it.
And the vehicle registered to the passport had been photographed forty minutes from Syracuse.
