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“With what?” she demanded. “I’m broke. He came into the bar on a Tuesday night,” she remembered, and told them everything she could think of.
It got worse, and kept getting worse.
Over the next six weeks, the full extent of the damage Gavin Rozwell wrought dropped hard. He’d managed to reroute her last mortgage payment, sucked up her last two direct deposit paychecks—one from each job. He’d run up her credit card to the tune of $8,321.85 as well as taking out two more major cards for a total there that hit over fifteen thousand.
He’d taken out a home equity loan on her house, in her name, using all her financial data. Her careful, hard-won home improvements had increased the value of her house since she’d purchased it, and her credit score was excellent. He’d taken out the maximum allowed, and had walked away with twenty-five thousand. And that in addition to a business start-up loan he’d wrangled, with her home as collateral, for another twenty-five thousand.
He shouldn’t have been able to get two loans, two different lenders, but he’d done it—as she learned he’d done it before.
The insurance payment on her stolen car barely covered the amount she owed on it.
She had nothing left but debt, legal tangles, and grief.
Worse, somehow worse, he’d used the MacBook to wipe out Nina’s meager savings in the hours between her death and when Morgan found her.
She had no pride left to swallow when she called her grandmother and asked for money to hire a lawyer.
Though both her employers offered her financial help, that she couldn’t swallow.
And though it shamed her, she accepted the offer of Nina’s car.
She had to work, and needed transportation to get there.
She planted no garden that summer.
On a Sunday morning in mid-July, she learned of yet another loan taken in her name when two men came to the house.
One look told her: bill collectors, so she turned off the lawn mower and waited.
“Looking for Morgan Albright.”
“I’m Morgan Albright.”
The two men exchanged a look. “Don’t look like him.”
“Because I’m not a him,” she said wearily. “If this is about the equity loan, the business loan, the credit card charges, my lawyer’s handling it.”
“You’re overdue, Morgan. Mr. Castle lent you the twenty in good faith. Full payment and interest due July first. Interest’s doubling every day since the first.”
“I don’t know a Mr. Castle, and he didn’t lend me anything. I’m dealing with identity theft, and can give you the contact for my lawyer and the FBI agents investigating.”
“Mr. Castle’s not interested in your problems, lady. Morgan Albright took the money, Morgan Albright pays.”
“How about you give us ten percent, show of good faith,” the second man suggested. “You don’t want any trouble.”
They might as well have asked her for the moon and a couple of planets.
“I have nothing but trouble! I don’t have ten percent of anything because he took everything. You’re looking for a man named Gavin Rozwell. He took this Mr. Castle’s money.”
She threw up her hands. “I work two jobs and I can barely cover the bills. I’ve got lawyer’s fees piling up because he took out two other loans in my name, and it’s a nightmare. For God’s sake, he beat and strangled my friend. Go find him. Go find the son of a bitch because it doesn’t look like the cops can.”
“That’s some story. It’s going to buy you a week. Things won’t be so polite when we come back.”
She called the police, she called the special agents.
And the next morning she found the tires slashed on Nina’s car.
Tears were finished. She might have trembled all the way to work, but tears were finished. She didn’t tell Bill, or anyone but the police. Even the idea of talking about it exhausted her.
