Page 14 of Unlocked

One of those people was her dear friend and mentor, Martha Gibson. Martha had been Tatum's English teacher in high school, and they'd kept in touch over the years. When the news of the Ponzi scheme broke, Martha had reached out, desperate for any help Tatum might be able to offer. She had invested her life savings with Granite Industries on the promise of a twenty percent return.

Tatum's heart broke for Martha and for all the other well-meaning people who had simply wanted a leg up in the world. She didn't lose much sleep over the wealthy investors. They were smart enough to know better. If it seemed too good to be true, it usually was.

She had told Martha she would look into it, but the truth was she'd known from the beginning that her options were limited. The Southern District of New York had already indicted the three men, so the wrongdoing was established. They would go through the system and probably end up at Club Fed, as they called the white-collar prison. They wouldn't get much time. They knew too many people in power, and frankly, there didn't seem to be much appetite these days for punishing the wealthy.

The most Tatum could do was launch a class action suit. It would take years and more money than any of the victims had. If she could hold out long enough and get her family firm to eat the cost, she would win. There was no question about that. But the reality was that it would be an empty victory.

The money was missing. Gone. And the three men responsible weren't talking.

That was what Tatum was really doing in here at midnight when she should have been sleeping. She held her glass to her temple, trying to ease the tension there. She’d tried to track the money. She'd been so certain that Japan would crack it open. One of the shell companies she'd been tracing had a registered address in Tokyo, and two of the signatories on the original Granite documentation had ties to a small private equity firm operating out of Osaka. She'd booked the flights herself, told no one except her assistant, and spent ten days working her way through every contact and document she could get her hands on.

Her result was…dismal. The Tokyo address was a mail forwarding service used by hundreds of companies. The Osaka firm had dissolved eighteen months ago. The signatures belonged to men who, according to two separate sources, didn't exist. She had flown halfway around the world on a hunch and come home empty-handed, jet-lagged, and angrier than she'd been when she left.

She let her head fall back to the cushy headrest, and her eyes slipped closed. The long hours were catching up to her, but the Granite case held her captive, not letting her succumb to the need to rest. Her fingers tightened automatically on the tumbler, refusing to set it aside, but not wishing to drop it.

The money trail was the most sophisticated thing she had ever encountered. Whoever had constructed it was light-years ahead of the run-of-the-mill scammers, which brought her back to the same conclusion she kept circling. The three men currently facing indictment weren’t capable of building something like this. They were the front of the house. The glad-handers who signed people up, who made people feel it was safe to invest, and presented themselves as the good time guys that people wanted to be friends with. They were not the brains of the operation.

Someone else was. And that someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure they couldn't be found. Ten days in Japan had proved that much, if nothing else.

She thought about the feeling she'd had at the gala. The prickling between her shoulder blades. The certainty of being watched. It had to be her imagination. Why would someone follow her? The three men were already known to the world.

Her stomach cramped.

Unless she was right and there was more to Granite Industries than those three men.

She hadn't found proof yet. Just whispers in the paperwork. Names that appeared and then couldn't be located in real life. Signatures that were unreadable. Addresses that didn't exist. Japan had given her more of the same and nothing else.

Tatum lifted her head and took another sip of her drink, letting her gaze drift to the photograph on the wall beside her. The stately looking gentleman staring back at her made her smile despite everything.

It had been her grandfather who had started her on this path. Peter William Wellington III. Her father's father. The man who had started Wellington, Wellington, and Smith. The beloved gentleman who had given her the membership to the Lock and Key Society.

He had taken time with her from a young age, teaching her about the law but also about how the world really worked. He was the kind of grandfather who got down on the floor and played whatever she wanted, tea parties, dress up, all of it, and always made time for her. During her teenage years, he took her to plays and shopping, but also to soup kitchens and volunteering with the unhoused. He made sure she saw both sides of life.

She had asked him about it once: Why was he doing all this?

He told her he'd known since the moment she was born that she was his mini-me. He had started the firm not to get rich but to help people. He had an unerring sense of justice and believed fully in holding people accountable. He wanted to make sure she understood the realities of life that wealth cushioned people from. He said he knew one day she would make a great difference. She heaved a yawn and let her lashes drift down again. Lethargy gripped her body and lulled her to sleep even as her mind continued to reel.

While she wanted to help Martha, it was really her grandfather she was doing this for. He was long dead, but she still wanted to make him proud. Japan had felt like a failure on that count, too. Ten days away and nothing to show for it except a deeper hole in the money trail and a bone-deep exhaustion she couldn't seem to shake.

The sound of shattering glass snapped her out of her reverie.

Her heart rate spiked, sharp and immediate. The walls of her secret room were all interior walls, which meant the sound hadn't come from outside the apartment.

It had come from inside.

She froze, listening, breath going shallow. A loud thump. Silence followed.

Slowly, she rose from the chair and moved toward the door. Should she open it? Should she check just enough to see? Should she dial 911?

That thought stalled her. Calling the police meant explaining the secret room, and that was a complication she didn't need. One she might not survive, at least not professionally.

More glass shattered, followed by a heavy thump like someone had dropped furniture. She stood there staring at the door, suddenly furious with herself for never installing cameras in her own apartment. She'd thought them intrusive. She'd worried about hacking, about someone watching her without her knowledge.

Now she had no eyes. No ears. No idea what was happening on the other side of the wall.

This is ridiculous.

She lifted her hand toward the door and froze as another sound reached her.