“Your sister is no longer the person I am searching for.”
The ride back took twenty-six minutes because they avoided the industrial route.
Sophie sat in the rear seat with her phone in both hands.
The young man drove without speaking.
Two blocks from her apartment, he finally looked at her in the mirror.
“I didn’t know you were the wrong sister.”
“You still broke into my home.”
His eyes returned to the road.
“I know.”
He stopped beneath a streetlamp and handed her a card with no name on it, only a number.
“For the door.”
Sophie left the card on the seat.
She walked the final two blocks through the rain.
Her apartment door hung crooked from the frame.
Mud covered the floor.
One chair had been overturned.
The kitchen knife block remained exactly where it had been, useless and untouched.
Sophie locked herself in the bathroom and called the police.
Only after she heard sirens approaching did she allow her hands to shake.
Chloe was found the next afternoon in a motel outside Joliet.
She had three hundred dollars, two false identification cards, and no plan beyond surviving one more night.
When Sophie entered the interview room at the police station, Chloe stood so quickly that her chair struck the wall.
“Soph.”
They had the same face, but fear had hollowed Chloe’s eyes.
She reached for her sister.
Sophie stepped back.
“You used my address.”
“I thought it was safer.”
“For whom?”
Chloe’s arms dropped.
“I didn’t know Leo would take you.”
“You knew he might come looking.”
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
The words landed harder than shouting.
Chloe began to cry.
Sophie did not comfort her.
Not because she had stopped loving her, but because love had become the hiding place where Chloe stored every consequence she did not want to carry.
“You are going to tell them everything,” Sophie said.
“The courier job.
The bonds.
Leo.
The locker.
Every name and every lie.”
“What if Romano comes after me?”
“Then you tell the truth before anyone else can use it against you.”
Chloe wiped her face.
“Will you stay?”
Sophie looked through the interview-room glass at the investigators waiting outside.
“I will stay while you give your statement.
After that, you will face what you did without using me as your exit.”
Chloe nodded.
It was the first honest agreement they had made in years.
The locker evidence matched Sophie’s insurance analysis.
Leo had redeemed the authentic bonds through shell companies, replaced them with void certificates, and filed a false theft claim to recover additional money.
Chloe had been hired to move the worthless paper.
