Chapter 15 - THE HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET
The surveillance wasn't coming from inside my apartment.
That was what the security team established first.
They found no hidden microphones.
No cameras concealed in furniture.
No compromised home security equipment.
Nothing resembling the devices discovered in Marcus's house.
For twenty minutes, I felt relieved.
Then Rachel showed me a photograph of the building across the street.
A brick apartment complex with dark green awnings.
Four floors.
Thirty-two units.
An ordinary building I'd walked past hundreds of times.
“Unit 4C was rented eleven months ago,” she said.
I looked at her.
“That was before Sophia moved in.”
“Yes.”
“Who rented it?”
“A property management company acting for a holding company.”
“Which one?”
“We're tracing it.”
“And the tenant?”
“The tenant information appears fabricated.”
I stared through my window.
Across the street, one curtain moved.
It was probably nothing.
A breeze.
Someone looking outside.
But my mind immediately imagined a camera behind the glass.
A lens pointed toward Sophia's bedroom.
I stepped away.
Rachel noticed.
“Michael, we're taking this seriously. But don't assume every window is watching you.”
“Someone photographed our Christmas dinner.”
“We haven't established how.”
“Whoever did it knew where Sophia was sitting.”
“Yes.”
I looked at her.
“And they wanted me to know.”
She didn't disagree.
By afternoon, investigators had obtained access to Unit 4C.
The apartment was empty.
No furniture.
No food.
No clothing.
But there were marks on the windowsill where equipment had apparently been mounted.
A technician documented unusual wiring near an electrical outlet.
Investigators recovered fragments of adhesive tape and a paper label.
The label contained a serial number.
Alex compared it with the records from Orchard.
The number appeared in an old equipment inventory.
Except the equipment wasn't thirty years old.
It was a modern wireless data receiver.
Someone had reused Orchard's internal identification system.
The operation had changed technology.
Not habits.
I wanted to storm across the street.
Instead, I stayed with Sophia.
That was harder than chasing the person responsible.
And more important.
That evening, while Sophia worked on a drawing at the kitchen table, she noticed me checking the windows again.
“Uncle Michael?”
“Yes?”
“Are you looking for somebody?”
I forced myself to turn away.
“Just checking outside.”
She studied me.
“Are bad people coming?”
I crouched beside her.
“I don't have information that anyone is coming here. But the police are checking something, and we're being careful.”
Sophia looked at the window.
Then at Bunny.
“Can we close the curtains?”
“Absolutely.”
We closed them together.
She insisted on doing the last one herself.
Then she returned to coloring.
I watched her for a moment.
She hadn't asked me to promise that danger didn't exist.
She'd asked for one small thing she could control.
I understood that.
A little too well.
Later that night, Alex arrived with news.
“We found the company that rented Unit 4C.”
“Who owns it?”
“Three layers of corporate registrations.”
“Of course.”
“The final beneficial owner appears to be a trust.”
“Whose trust?”
He placed a printout on the table.
DAVID REED FAMILY SECURITY TRUST.
I stared.
My father's name.
Our father's name.
The man who had been dead for twenty-three years.
“That's impossible.”
“Someone created the trust using documents signed while he was alive.”
“When?”
“Six months before the accident.”
“Could Dad have set it up?”
“Possibly. But its records show changes long after his death.”
I read the printout.
A trustee had been replaced nine years earlier.
Another had been replaced four years earlier.
And the most recent trustee appointment had occurred eleven months ago.
The name was blacked out in the copy Alex possessed.
“How do we identify them?”
“Rachel's seeking the full records.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“What if Dad created the trust to protect evidence?”
Alex didn't answer immediately.
“Then somebody may have taken control of it.”
I looked toward Sophia's bedroom.
“Or somebody used it to keep watching his family.”
Alex nodded.
Neither possibility comforted me.
Two days later, Rachel received the trustee information under legal process.
She asked me to meet her at a government office rather than discuss it by phone.
That alone told me the answer was important.
When I arrived, she placed a folder in front of me.
“Before you read this,” she said, “I need you to understand we haven't established criminal responsibility.”
“Rachel.”
“I'm serious.”
“Just tell me.”
She opened the folder.
The current trustee was a licensed attorney.
A woman named Margaret Ellis.
I didn't recognize the name.
Then Rachel showed me a second page.
A photograph.
An older woman.
Gray hair.
Kind eyes.
A familiar smile.
I stared at her.
“That's impossible.”
Rachel remained silent.
I hadn't seen this woman in years.
But I remembered her vividly.
She'd visited our house when I was a boy.
Brought birthday presents.
Attended family dinners.
Helped my mother after Dad died.
I knew her as Aunt Margaret.
Not a blood relative.
One of my parents' closest friends.
“Margaret Ellis?” I whispered.
Rachel nodded.
“She changed her surname after marrying.”
I could barely speak.
“What was it before?”
Rachel turned the page.
The original name appeared beneath an old driver's-license photograph.
MARGARET VALE.
I stared.
“Vale?”
Rachel nodded.
“She is Eleanor Vale's younger sister.”
My mind raced.
The woman who'd visited our home after Dad died.
The woman who knew our family history.
The woman who had apparently administered a trust connected to a surveillance apartment across from my home.
“Aunt Margaret was watching us?”
“We don't know whether she knew how the property was being used,” Rachel said.
“Then find her.”
“We're trying.”
“Where is she?”
“Her office is closed. Her phone goes unanswered.”
I leaned back.
For a moment, I couldn't breathe.
Then Rachel showed me the final page.
The trust had another beneficiary.
Not me.
Not Marcus.
Not our mother.
A minor child.
The record identified the child only by initials.
S.R.
Sophia Reed.
And according to the trust documents, she was scheduled to receive access to a sealed inheritance when she turned seven.
I stared at Rachel.
“Sophia's birthday is in six weeks.”
Rachel nodded.
I looked down at the page.
May you like
Someone had placed my niece at the center of a financial arrangement created before she was born.
And someone else had apparently spent the last eleven months trying to find out what that arrangement contained.
