Page 61 of The Jealous Girl

Not something that needed approval.

Not something to be fitted around everyone else.

Again.

23

NOW

Late August

Wednesday

I’d never signed any documents for the stables. I knew that. And yet…

I stared at the screen again.

It looked just like my signature. The same swirl on the K. The same slant to the lettering.

But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t.

And yet there it was.

My gaze shifted to the heading at the top of the screen.

Sales Agreement

I frowned as I scrolled the details for the sale of a foal. I paused at the bottom; it was dated July, two years earlier. While I was still at the stables.

I shook my head slowly. The timing fitted. But, still, I would remember signing something like that. Wouldn’t I?

I grabbed the laptop, swung my feet to the floor and scurried to the table, picking up a pen and notepad as I went. If there was something wrong, something hidden, it would be in the numbers. It had to be.

I set everything down on the table, slid into a chair and pulled the laptop closer.

This was what I was good at. Details. Analysis.

I worked through the files again, more carefully this time, focusing on everything from two years ago. I compared each document to the spreadsheet, cross-checking every number.

There had to be a discrepancy somewhere.

Something that would explain why someone would forge my signature.

Five hours later, my eyes burned from lack of sleep but I couldn’t stop.

I wouldn’t.

Not until I figured out what was going on.

Why my signature was on paperwork where it didn’t belong.

And yet nothing stood out. Nothing explained it.

At least not to me. But then, so much of what I was looking at didn’t even make sense.

Vet treatments. Medication logs. Breeding records. All were filled with terms I barely recognised.

I scrolled through the photos I’d taken on my phone. The quality wasn’t ideal. The flash had washed out parts of the pages, but there was enough there to make them readable. And, yet, still completely useless.