Chapter 4 - LAUREN’S ENVELOPE
The envelope arrived at the hospital under police escort.
My name had been written in Lauren’s handwriting.
I recognized the sharp slant from the birthday card she once sent Matthew at our home.
She had signed it with only one initial.
L.
At the time, Matthew claimed it came from a client.
Detective Ortiz opened the envelope while wearing gloves.
Inside were three items.
A brass key.
A photograph of Matthew standing outside a small house in Southampton.
And a note.
CLARE, HE LIED TO BOTH OF US.
The message continued beneath those words.
THE KEY OPENS BOX 417 AT THE GRAND CENTRAL STORAGE VAULT.
DO NOT LET MATTHEW GET THERE FIRST.
My father read the note over the detective’s shoulder.
“Is that all?”
Ortiz turned the paper over.
There was an address written on the back.
It belonged to an abandoned office building in Long Island City.
I recognized it immediately.
NexusCore’s first headquarters.
The place where Matthew and I had worked before the investors arrived.
Before the glass towers.
Before the magazine covers.
Before I disappeared from the company’s history.
“What would Lauren keep there?”
I asked.
My father looked at me.
“Perhaps nothing.”
“No.”
I stared at the address.
“She wants me to remember something.”
Seven years earlier, NexusCore had occupied two rooms above a closed furniture store.
The heating barely worked.
Rain leaked through the windows.
Matthew and I slept beneath our desks during product launches.
He hated that building.
I loved it.
It was the last place where the company had truly belonged to both of us.
Then I remembered the wall safe.
It had been installed behind a framed photograph of the Queensboro Bridge.
Only Matthew and I knew the combination.
“I need to go there.”
My mother immediately shook her head.
“You are not leaving this bed.”
“Someone else can check the safe.”
“No one else will know what to look for.”
My father moved closer.
“Then tell Henderson.”
“I don’t know what Lauren wants me to find.”
I closed my eyes.
A memory surfaced.
Three weeks before NexusCore’s first major funding round, Matthew had asked me to sign a stack of documents.
Most were routine incorporation papers.
One was different.
It transferred the original NexusCore predictive engine into a separate intellectual-property trust.
Matthew said the structure would protect us if the company failed.
The trust was registered under my maiden name.
Clare Elizabeth Sterling.
I had forgotten about it because Matthew later told me the lawyers dissolved it.
“What is it?”
My father asked.
“The engine.”
“What engine?”
“The original NexusCore architecture.”
I struggled to sit upright.
“I wrote most of the first model.”
“You never told me that.”
“Because I wanted Matthew to feel like it was his.”
My father’s expression hardened.
“Was ownership transferred to the company?”
“I thought so.”
“Thought?”
“Matthew handled the final documents.”
Detective Ortiz stepped toward the door.
“I’ll send officers to the old office.”
“Wait.”
I looked at Lauren’s note again.
She had not written that the key opened the office safe.
She had written that it opened a storage box beneath Grand Central.
The office address was separate.
Two locations.
Two pieces of evidence.
And Matthew knew about both.
My phone vibrated on the hospital table.
The screen displayed an unknown number.
Ortiz motioned for everyone to remain silent.
She activated the recording system and answered on speaker.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then Lauren’s voice whispered through the line.
“Clare?”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did Matthew do to you?”
“He knows about the box.”
My father leaned toward the phone.
“Lauren, tell us your location.”
She ignored him.
“Clare, the company was never the real target.”
My breathing slowed.
“What was?”
“You.”
A door slammed on Lauren’s end of the call.
She gasped.
Then her voice became urgent.
“He has been moving money for three years.”
“Where?”
“Through the foundation.”
NexusCore’s charitable foundation managed almost two hundred million dollars.
I had created it to fund technology programs in public schools.
My father’s face changed.
Lauren continued.
“He needed your signatures because the foundation still lists you as co-chair.”
“I resigned years ago.”
“No.”
Her voice cracked.
“He never filed the resignation.”
Footsteps approached somewhere near her.
“Lauren?”
“He made you responsible for everything.”
The line went dead.
Detective Ortiz immediately ordered a trace.
My father stared at the phone.
I stared at the photograph of the Southampton house.
The tiny blue sock beneath Matthew’s car seat returned to my mind.
Then I saw something in the photograph I had missed before.
A small boy stood behind the upstairs window.
May you like
He was holding a toy airplane.
And beside him stood a man I recognized from the NexusCore board.
