Chapter 3 - The Apartment I Pretended to Return To
I returned to Atlanta three days later.
Not because Gavin convinced me.
Because I needed the blue envelope.
Dana? No. We need attorney later. For now Lucas insisted he come. But Gavin might be suspicious if Lucas with her. She can go with police standby? Maybe not yet. Let's create lawyer at Ch5. For now she returns with Lucas waiting nearby.
Lucas parked around the corner.
“If you don’t call in fifteen minutes, I’m coming in.”
“Don’t.”
“Sam.”
“If something happens, call police.”
“You mean when something happens.”
“I need Gavin to think I’m still deciding.”
Lucas hated it.
So did I.
But Harriet had spent years teaching me how much people reveal when they believe you are weaker than they are.
I rang the bell.
Gavin opened.
He looked exhausted.
Good.
Not injured.
Not broken.
Just inconvenienced.
“Samantha.”
I stepped inside.
He reached for me.
I moved away.
His hands dropped.
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that.”
“I mean it.”
Harriet sat in the living room.
She had not gone home.
Of course.
A stack of folders sat beside her.
The moment she saw me, she placed a newspaper over them.
Small movement.
Interesting.
“I’m glad you came to your senses.”
I looked at her.
“I came for clothes.”
Her lips tightened.
Gavin said:
“We need to talk.”
“I’m tired.”
“Sam.”
“I buried my mother yesterday.”
That stopped him.
Not because he cared.
Because arguing would look ugly even to him.
I walked toward the bedroom.
The metal document box was in the closet.
Unlocked.
I had always locked it.
The tiny brass key normally hung from a chain behind my jewelry tray.
The chain remained.
The key did not.
I crouched.
Opened box.
Birth certificate.
Marriage certificate.
Insurance.
Old pay stubs.
Mom’s handwritten recipe card I saved because she once spilled tomato sauce across it.
No blue envelope.
I lifted everything.
Nothing.
Then I noticed scratches near the inner lock.
Someone had forced it.
The back of my neck went cold.
Gavin stood in bedroom doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for my passport.”
“It’s in the desk.”
He knew.
Of course.
I closed box.
“Did you open this?”
“No.”
“Where’s the key?”
“No idea.”
“Mom put something in here.”
He shrugged too quickly.
“Your mother put a lot of junk everywhere.”
I looked at him.
“What was your investor meeting about?”
His expression changed.
“Business.”
“What business?”
“You never cared before.”
True.
He made sure business discussions became so condescending I stopped asking.
“I care now.”
“Real estate.”
“What kind?”
“Commercial.”
“Where?”
He smiled.
“Why are you interrogating me?”
I stood.
“Because Mom wrote that you asked about her Apex land.”
Silence.
Then:
“She misunderstood.”
“What?”
“I asked if she wanted to sell.”
“How did you know she owned it?”
“Public records exist.”
That answer was believable.
Too believable.
“Why did you care?”
“I had investors looking at land near the industrial corridor.”
“So you approached my mother.”
“I offered her an opportunity.”
“She said no.”
His jaw tightened.
“She was sentimental about dirt.”
“It was her dirt.”
Harriet appeared behind him.
“Loretta was selfish.”
I stared at her.
“My mother is dead.”
“That doesn’t turn every decision she made into a good one.”
“Get out of my bedroom.”
Harriet’s eyes widened.
Gavin stepped forward.
“Don’t talk to her like that.”
I laughed once.
The sound surprised all three of us.
Then I picked up a suitcase.
“I’m leaving.”
“You just got here.”
“I said I came for clothes.”
He blocked the doorway.
Not touching.
But familiar.
My body remembered the storage room before my mind did.
“Move.”
He hesitated.
Then stepped aside.
Progress?
No.
Strategy.
He was scared of police now.
Good.
As I passed the printer in the hall, a small green light blinked.
RECENT JOB STORED.
Our wireless printer retained temporary scan history until cleared.
I knew because I had used it for tax paperwork.
The screen displayed:
SCAN 03:14
Date:
The morning my mother died.
3:14 a.m.
I had been trapped beneath the stairs around 2:10.
On my way to Macon by 2:30.
What had Gavin scanned at 3:14?
I touched history.
One file.
No preview.
Destination:
GVANCE BUSINESS.
I did not open it there.
Gavin was watching.
I took my suitcase.
Then Harriet’s newspaper slid from the folders as she stood.
One tab became visible.
APEX CORRIDOR.
I kept walking.
Outside, I called Lucas.
“Drive.”
“What happened?”
“The envelope is gone.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
I looked back at the apartment window.
“Gavin scanned something forty minutes after he locked me up.”
At Lucas’s hotel, I opened the cloud account still linked to our household printer.
Gavin had forgotten that I set it up.
The scan file remained.
PDF.
Four pages.
The first page loaded slowly.
PROPERTY WARRANTY DEED.
Grantor:
Loretta Elaine Mercer.
Grantee:
Macon Ridge Development LLC.
Parcel:
The twenty three acres beside the Apex industrial corridor.
I stopped breathing.
Mom had supposedly transferred her land.
Then I scrolled to the signature page.
Loretta’s name.
A notary seal.
Date:
Three days before she died.
Lucas stared over my shoulder.
“Did Mom sell?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she wrote that Gavin asked and she said no.”
Then I enlarged Loretta’s signature.
It looked right.
Almost.
The final curve was wrong.
Mom always looped the last letter upward.
This one ended flat.
I photographed the page.
Then the grantee.
Macon Ridge Development LLC.
Never heard of it.
Lucas whispered:
“Sam.”
“What?”
“What if the investor meeting wasn’t about buying Mom’s land?”
I looked at the deed.
May you like
“What if they thought Gavin already owned it?”
Continue to the next part: The missing blue envelope is replaced by something worse, a deed claiming Loretta transferred her Apex property days before she died to a company Samantha has never heard of.
