“Where did you get that?” Lydia asked.
Her voice changed when she saw the USB drive.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
It simply lost the polished calm she had been wearing since Callum died.
I looked at the little black drive lying beside my lawyer’s laptop.
“Callum gave it to me.”
Her father, Martin, moved first.
“Before his death?”
My attorney, Rebecca Hale, turned toward him.
“Why does that matter?”
Martin’s jaw tightened.
He was the kind of man who seemed dressed for a boardroom even when he was sitting in somebody else’s dining room.
Silver hair, perfect cuffs, measured voice.
His advisory firm had managed money for wealthy families for years.
Callum had once told me Martin could make a grocery list sound like a merger agreement.
Now that voice had disappeared.
Lydia looked at me.
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
A flash of relief crossed her face.
Rebecca noticed it too.
She closed the folder Martin had pushed toward me without reading past the first page.
“We’re done here for today.”
Martin frowned.
“There is no reason to be theatrical.”
“I agree,” Rebecca said.
“Which is why Mrs.
Whitaker will not discuss a twelve-million-dollar transfer, her son’s estate, or any documents you want signed until I have reviewed everything.”
“The transfer was obviously made while Callum was distressed.”
Rebecca’s eyes settled on him.
“Then you won’t mind giving me time to determine why he was distressed.”
Nobody spoke.
I picked up the USB.
Lydia watched it all the way into my handbag.
Outside, I made it six steps before my knees weakened.
Rebecca caught my elbow.
“I’m all right,” I said automatically.
“You don’t have to be.”
“I need to know what my son was afraid of.”
Rebecca studied me for a moment, then nodded.
“We find that out before we do anything else.”
We reviewed the drive in her office the following morning.
I expected some single devastating revelation.
Grief had trained my mind to expect disaster in one blow: one phone call, one diagnosis, one sentence.
Callum had left something different.
A trail.
There were folders of financial statements, insurance records, meeting notes, saved emails, copies of documents and audio files.
Some were months old.
Others had been created only days before he came to my house.
Callum had organized everything with the same obsessive precision he used as a child arranging screws beside a dismantled clock.
The first folder concerned investments connected to Martin’s advisory firm.
Callum had initially allowed the firm to review part of his finances after marrying Lydia.
Over time, the relationship had expanded.
Martin had proposed investment structures, insurance arrangements and transfers that Callum increasingly questioned.
Nothing on the first few pages proved a crime.
