“He did not get inside,” Aaron continued, his voice steadying mine. “But he did not walk away, either. He just stood there on your porch, peering through the glass like he was confirming you were not around.”
Hot tears pricked the corners of my eyes. “Why are you telling me all of this right now?”
“Because I am not dropping you off at that house tonight,” he replied without a shred of hesitation. “And you are not going back there until this is handled.”
I shook my head, my thoughts unraveling like cheap yarn. “I completely do not understand any of this. I do not have anything he would possibly want.”
Aaron leaned back heavily against his seat. The dim glow of the security light caught the deep lines of exhaustion etched around his mouth. “Neither do I. But I know exactly what happens when dangerous people decide that an innocent person is suddenly a problem.” He paused, swallowing hard. “And I know the devastating cost of what happens when no one steps up to warn them in time.”
The rain drummed a frantic rhythm against the glass, counting down the seconds we were wasting.
“We are going to the police,” Aaron announced. “Right now.”
For the very first time since I buried Daniel, the absolute, crushing weight of sheer terror settled deep into my bones. I suddenly realized just how incredibly close danger had been standing to my welcome mat.
But we did not speed straight to the precinct. First, Aaron just drove. He navigated aimlessly through a labyrinth of darkened side streets, looping through sleeping residential neighborhoods that all looked identical under the stormy sky. He did not say a single word for several long minutes. He simply let the rhythmic sweeping of the windshield wipers calm my racing pulse, giving the initial shock enough time to settle into something I could actually function inside of.
When the silence finally broke, his tone was entirely clinical and controlled. “I need you to tell me absolutely everything you have been working on down in that archive.”
I stared blankly at the rain streaking down the passenger window, watching the red glare of brake lights smear across the wet pavement. I took a shaky breath and explained the audit to him, diving into far more detail this time.
I told him how, over the past two agonizing months, several massive civil settlement files had consistently come up short. Original, signed documents were simply missing from the locked physical folders. High-resolution digital scans had been subtly altered. Settlement amounts had been adjusted downward by seemingly insignificant percentages that most exhausted clients would never notice.
“They were always cases involving the most vulnerable plaintiffs,” I explained, my voice trembling. “Elderly tenants pushed out of their apartments. Injured laborers relying on disability. Immigrants who barely spoke enough English to read the fine print. It was nothing flashy enough to trigger an immediate federal investigation. It was just enough to quietly siphon money away from people who could not fight back.”
My supervisor had initially brushed it off as a lazy clerical error. Then, she suspected gross negligence. Finally, she quietly asked me to start tracking the paper trail to see if a pattern emerged.
Aaron nodded slowly, absorbing the gravity of it all. “Victor specifically complained about settlements in my backseat. He complained about payouts being mysteriously delayed or rerouted. He said someone upstairs was starting to get incredibly nervous.”
“Upstairs?” I echoed. “That would mean upper management. Or the attorneys who blindly sign off on the disbursements without reading the fine print.”
My chest tightened so painfully I could barely draw breath. “But I swear to you, I never took a single file home,” I pleaded. “Never. Everything stays locked in the subterranean vault. Every single movement is logged.”
“I absolutely believe you,” Aaron assured me. “But Victor clearly does not know that.”
He pulled the sedan into the sprawling, cracked asphalt of a grocery store parking lot that had been abandoned for years. A rusted neon sign still hummed and flickered overhead, casting an eerie glow over the empty storefront. He shifted into park and cut the engine once more.
Then, he handed me his unlocked phone. A digital notepad completely filled the screen. It was meticulously organized by date, pickup location, and fragmented quotes, typed out exactly as he had heard them from the rearview mirror.
I scrolled with a shaking thumb. She checks chains of custody. Audit nights: Tuesday, Friday. House empty after midnight. If she has physical copies, they will be sitting right there.
A wave of deep nausea rolled through my stomach. “You seriously wrote all of this down?”
“After his third ride with me, yes,” Aaron replied softly. “That was when he started muttering your street name over and over, almost like he was practicing it for a presentation.”
My hands shook so violently I almost dropped the device. There was even more. Two nights ago, Victor had loudly asked another passenger in Aaron’s car if they knew how to bypass the outdated alarm systems on older bungalows. Last night, he had rambled extensively about detached garages, flimsy back doors, and how foolish homeowners never bothered to reinforce them.
I squeezed my eyes shut. My mind instantly raced to the loose, rusted hinge on my garage door, the kitchen window that never quite latched properly, and that missing yellow legal pad. I had spent days trying to convince myself I had simply tossed it out.
“I thought I just lost my notes,” I whispered to the dark car.
Aaron did not offer empty comfort. Instead, he reached into the deep center console and retrieved a small, black digital voice recorder.
“I started recording his specific rides,” he admitted. “Audio only. It was strictly for my own protection. Passengers legally consent to it through the app’s sprawling terms of service, but nobody ever actually reads them.”
He pressed a button.