Chapter 13 - The List
Melissa Grant lived in Colorado.
Catherine Hale lived in Oregon.
Rachel was in the same state as us but three counties away.
Four women.
Four families with money or property.
That could still have been Mason doing research.
Then investigators found the list.
It was on an old hard drive from unit 317.
A spreadsheet created nearly nine years earlier.
Twenty-three women.
Columns for age.
Family.
Assets.
Relationship status.
Parents.
Property.
Vulnerabilities.
My daughter’s name was not originally on it.
She appeared in a later version.
Fourteen months before she met Mason.
Sophie stared at the printed sheet in Margaret’s office.
“How did he know me?”
Cavanaugh pointed to a column labeled SOURCE.
Next to several names were initials.
AG.
HL.
PR.
Beside Sophie:
TC.
“Who’s TC?” she asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
My stomach tightened.
“Could be someone from our family.”
“It could be almost anything,” Cavanaugh said.
“What does the vulnerability column say?”
He hesitated.
Sophie grabbed the paper.
BEREAVED FATHER. CONFLICT WITH MOTHER. TRUST UNTIL 35.
She stopped breathing.
My husband had been dead for five years when the entry was created.
Our worst fights had happened in the two years following his death.
Those arguments were private.
Or I thought they were.
“How would a stranger know about Mom and me?”
Cavanaugh tapped another field.
CONNECTION: COMMUNITY FOUNDATION DINNER, 2019.
I remembered the event.
Daniel’s old business sponsored a table annually.
Sophie had attended with me once.
“Was Mason there?” she asked.
“I don’t remember.”
Cavanaugh had photographs from the foundation.
Mason did not appear in any obvious shots.
Erica did.
In the background of one picture.
Serving wine.
She had worked for the catering company.
Sophie looked at the photograph.
“That’s impossible.”
Rachel leaned closer.
“It’s her.”
Erica had been in the same room with Sophie nearly a year before Mason supposedly met her by chance at a coffee shop.
Sophie whispered, “She picked me.”
Nobody corrected her.
Cavanaugh explained what investigators suspected.
Erica and Mason had used temporary jobs, public records, social networks, charity events, and professional connections to identify potential targets.
Some names never progressed beyond research.
Some women never even met Mason.
But three had.
Then Sophie.
“What does TC mean?” she asked again.
“We’re working on it.”
I studied the list.
A column near the far right contained notes.
Beside Sophie:
MOTHER TRUSTEE. DIFFICULT. DO NOT APPROACH THROUGH FAMILY.
I almost laughed.
Even as a stranger, Mason had found me inconvenient.
Then another note:
S RESPONDS TO VALIDATION AFTER CONFLICT.
My throat tightened.
Sophie read it too.
Her face changed.
“He practiced.”
“What?” I asked.
“The things he said.”
Rachel nodded sadly.
“Yes.”
I thought of their first months together.
Sophie had been glowing.
Mason told her she was strong.
Independent.
Undervalued.
He praised her for surviving her father’s death.
He told her she deserved to make choices without asking my permission.
Every compliment may have been calibrated.
Sophie folded the paper.
“No.”
Cavanaugh looked at her.
“No what?”
“I’m not letting him own every good memory.”
No one spoke.
“He may have planned what he said,” Sophie continued, “but I still laughed when I laughed. I still loved my wedding dress. Ava is still mine. He doesn’t get to turn my entire life into evidence.”
Rachel looked at her with something like admiration.
That was the beginning of Sophie changing.
Until then, every discovery had happened to her.
That day, she started choosing what it meant.
She asked Cavanaugh whether she could assist in identifying dates, conversations, and locations from photographs.
He agreed under controlled conditions.
She spent hours matching surveillance pictures to events.
One from the grocery store.
One from my driveway.
One outside her doctor.
One at Daniel’s grave.
That one stopped her.
Mason had photographed her kneeling beside her father’s headstone.
Two weeks before their first date.
On the back was a note.
TODAY.
“What does that mean?” Sophie asked.
Cavanaugh looked grim.
“We believe this may have been the day he decided to approach you.”
She touched the image carefully.
“Dad’s birthday.”
I felt my eyes burn.
She had been vulnerable that day.
Of course she had.
That evening, Cavanaugh finally identified TC.
Not a person.
A company.
Tanner Consulting.
A private data-broker firm that had since closed.
They sold background and asset information to law firms, investors, and private clients.
The original owner was dead.
Records were incomplete.
But investigators recovered one client invoice linked to Northstar.
It included a batch of names.
Sophie Carter was one.
I thought that might be the worst of it.
Then Margaret received a call from the trust’s investment manager.
Someone had tried to access Sophie’s beneficiary information that morning.
The caller claimed to be acting under a power of attorney.
The document provided as proof carried Sophie’s signature.
And my notarized approval.
I had never seen it.
The notary seal belonged to a woman named Patricia Reed.
May you like
Mason’s mother.
The woman Sophie had been told was dead.
