Chapter 6
I thought nothing Daniel did could shock me anymore.
I was wrong.
Emma was seven years old.
Seven.
She still believed chocolate milk tasted better through a straw.
She slept with a stuffed rabbit named Captain.
She had lost her top front tooth two weeks earlier and wrote the Tooth Fairy a thank-you note.
And her father had used her identity to borrow money.
Detective Cole showed me the documents at the station.
A credit profile existed under Emma’s Social Security number.
The birth year had been altered.
Two credit cards.
One small business loan.
Thousands of dollars.
My hands trembled as I stared at the paperwork.
“Can this ruin her credit?”
“It can be corrected,” Detective Cole said. “Because she’s a minor and this appears to be identity theft, the bureaus have procedures.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She understood.
“No. It doesn’t have to follow her into adulthood if we address it properly.”
I covered my face.
Grace sat beside me.
Dad stood near the wall with his arms crossed.
He had barely spoken since we arrived.
That worried me more than yelling would have.
Detective Cole slid another document forward.
“This loan was processed at Lisa’s branch.”
I looked at the signature.
My daughter’s name had been typed beside a false date of birth.
“Did Lisa know?”
“We’re investigating.”
“You know.”
The detective paused.
“We have enough evidence to treat her involvement seriously.”
Grace touched my arm before I could ask more.
Detective Cole continued.
“We also identified Rebecca Hayes.”
“The woman from the camera?”
“Yes. She’s a bookkeeper for DMB Consulting.”
“So Daniel really owns it?”
“It appears so.”
I laughed once.
There was nothing funny about it.
“My husband told me we couldn’t afford a new washing machine.”
No one answered.
“He made me save for six months to replace a washing machine while he secretly owned a company?”
Detective Cole leaned forward.
“Rachel, we believe DMB Consulting may have been used to move borrowed funds.”
“For what?”
“That’s still under investigation.”
Then she asked whether Daniel gambled.
“No.”
“Investments?”
“I don’t know.”
“Large purchases you couldn’t explain?”
I thought about his truck.
Paid through work, he said.
Trips to Atlanta.
Business.
Late meetings.
Construction projects.
Everything in Daniel’s life came with explanations.
I had stopped questioning them because questioning him always cost me something.
“I don’t know anything about my own husband,” I whispered.
Dad finally spoke.
“You know what matters.”
I looked at him.
“You know what he did to you.”
That afternoon, Grace helped me file identity-theft reports for both myself and Emma.
We froze Emma’s credit.
I didn’t even know parents could do that.
Every form made me angrier.
Every signature Daniel had forged felt like another hand around my throat.
Then Michael called.
“There’s someone at Dad’s house.”
My heart raced.
“Daniel?”
“No. Lisa.”
Grace took the phone.
“Do not let her inside.”
“She says she needs to talk to Rachel.”
“Tell her all communication goes through counsel.”
I could hear Lisa in the background.
“Michael, please. I’m trying to help.”
I took the phone back.
“Put me on speaker.”
Grace looked at me.
I knew she didn’t like the idea.
“I won’t argue.”
Michael switched to speaker.
“Rachel?” Lisa said.
“Yes.”
She sounded like she had been crying.
“I need to explain.”
“My lawyer is here.”
Silence.
Then, “Daniel lied to me.”
Grace began writing notes.
“About what?”
“He said you knew about the accounts.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
“He said you had bad credit and wanted everything structured differently. He said you didn’t want your father knowing because he’d judge you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know that now.”
“You work at a bank, Lisa.”
“I didn’t process everything.”
“You processed Emma’s loan.”
Silence.
I waited.
Finally, she whispered, “I didn’t know that was Emma’s Social Security number.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I swear.”
“You’ve known her since she was born.”
“I never saw the full number before.”
“But you knew my information.”
“I thought you signed the authorization.”
“You thought I signed documents I never appeared in front of you to sign?”
Lisa started crying.
“Daniel brought notarized copies.”
Grace quietly mouthed, Stop.
I listened.
“He said you were sick.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
“What kind of sick?”
Another pause.
“He said you were having anxiety episodes. That sometimes you couldn’t leave the house.”
My skin crawled.
I had never been diagnosed with anxiety.
Daniel had told people I was unstable long before filing his custody petition.
He had built the story in advance.
Lisa continued.
“He told me not to embarrass you by asking questions.”
“How convenient.”
“Rachel, please. The police came to my branch today.”
“That sounds like a conversation for your attorney.”
“I could lose my job.”
I stared at nothing.
“My seven-year-old could have started adulthood buried under debt.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You knew enough.”
Lisa began sobbing.
Michael’s voice came from nearby.
“You need to leave.”
Then Lisa said something that stopped us all.
“Daniel has another account.”
Grace leaned toward the phone.
“What account?”
Lisa’s breathing sounded uneven.
“He keeps cash somewhere.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where?”
“He never told me.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“Because two months ago he asked me how quickly he could transfer fifty thousand dollars overseas without triggering a review.”
My heart pounded.
“Overseas where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would he ask that?”
“I don’t know!”
Grace scribbled something.
Lisa lowered her voice.
“But he said something else.”
“What?”
“He said if everything went bad, he had a backup plan.”
My hands turned cold.
“What backup plan?”
“I asked him. He said, ‘Rachel won’t be able to fight me if she can’t find me.’”
I looked at Grace.
Her expression changed instantly.
“Lisa, did he mention Emma?”
Silence.
Then Lisa whispered, “Yes.”
My blood froze.
“What did he say?”
“He said he’d never let you turn his daughter against him.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
Grace took my phone.
“Lisa, listen carefully. Do not contact Daniel. Do not warn him about this conversation. We are providing this information to law enforcement.”
“I’m scared.”
“You should speak to your own lawyer.”
Grace ended the call.
I was already calling Michael.
“Where’s Emma?”
“Inside.”
“Go look at her.”
“Rachel—”
“Right now.”
I heard him walking.
A door opened.
“Hey, bug.”
Emma answered sleepily.
“I’m drawing.”
Michael came back.
“She’s here.”
I could breathe again.
Detective Cole took Lisa’s statement seriously.
So did Grace.
Within two hours, she filed an emergency motion asking the court to restrict Daniel from removing Emma from the state and to require surrender of her passport.
There was one problem.
We couldn’t find Emma’s passport.
I knew where it had been.
The bedroom safe.
When police supervised my belongings retrieval, the passport wasn’t there.
Daniel had removed it before his first arrest.
Grace’s face went pale when I told her.
“Why didn’t we catch that?”
“I thought it was with the birth certificates.”
We checked everything.
No passport.
Detective Cole contacted federal authorities to flag it.
I felt as if the walls were closing in again.
That evening, I sat beside Emma while she colored.
She drew three people.
Me.
Her.
Grandpa.
No Daniel.
I stared at the picture.
“Who’s this?”
“Us.”
I pointed carefully.
“Where’s Daddy?”
She stopped coloring.
“At Grandma Carol’s.”
The answer was simple.
Literal.
Then she added, “He said once we could go somewhere nobody knows us.”
My heart stopped.
“When did he say that?”
She kept coloring.
“A long time ago.”
“Where?”
“In the car.”
“Was I there?”
“No.”
“What did he say exactly?”
She thought.
“He said maybe someday it would just be me and him and nobody could tell him what to do.”
I forced myself to stay calm.
“Did he say where you would go?”
She shrugged.
“Somewhere with a beach.”
“Did he show you anything?”
Emma looked up.
“A picture.”
“What picture?”
“A house.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
She returned to coloring.
“Daddy said people speak Spanish there.”
I texted Grace under the table.
Then the doorbell rang.
Everyone froze.
Dad checked the camera.
Two detectives stood outside.
Detective Cole was one of them.
I opened the door.
Her expression told me something had happened.
“We need to talk.”
Emma looked up.
Dad immediately took her into the den.
Detective Cole waited until she was gone.
“We located the missing passport.”
Relief hit me.
“Where?”
“Daniel had it.”
My stomach turned.
“How?”
“He was stopped this afternoon.”
“Stopped where?”
Detective Cole looked directly at me.
“At the airport.”
I couldn’t speak.
“He had Emma’s passport, his own passport, and twelve thousand dollars in cash.”
Grace arrived twenty minutes later.
By then, police had confirmed more.
Daniel claimed he was traveling alone for work.
He said Emma’s passport was accidentally left in his laptop bag.
But his ticket was one-way.
Destination: Cancún, Mexico.
And inside his bag, officers had found something else.
A printed copy of Emma’s school schedule.
Her dismissal times.
Her bus route.
And a handwritten note.
Tuesday — 3:10.
North gate.
May you like
I stared at the page until the words blurred.
Tuesday was tomorrow.
