Inside lay Lisa’s missing silver laptop, her cell phone, and a thick stack of printed financial documents. I opened the top folder. It contained ledger sheets from the estate trust my late first wife had set up for Lisa—a trust that Derrick had been managing as the executor until Lisa turned twenty-one next month. The documents detailed systemic embezzlement. Over three hundred thousand dollars had been funneled out of the trust into shell corporations owned by Derrick and Naomi.

But it wasn’t just theft. The final document was a life insurance policy taken out in Lisa’s name just three weeks ago, listing Derrick and Naomi as the sole beneficiaries in the event of an accidental death.

My blood turned to ice. They hadn’t just beaten her to silence her about the money. They had tried to kill her to collect the policy before she reached her twenty-first birthday and discovered the trust was empty.

Suddenly, the floorboard outside the dorm room creaked.

I quietly closed the lockbox, slid it under the bed, and stood up, stepping into the deep shadows near the closet. The door handle rattled, and then the door swung open.

Derrick stepped into the room, holding a flashlight. His knuckles were still wrapped in makeshift bandages, the dried blood dark under the beam of his light. He muttered a curse as he looked at the mess he had already made, clearly frustrated that he hadn’t found the box during his first frantic search.

“Looking for this?” I asked, stepping out of the shadows.

Derrick spun around, dropping the flashlight. It rolled across the floor, illuminating his panicked face. He tried to recover his composure, narrowing his eyes and stepping toward me. “Marvin. You shouldn’t be here. This is a crime scene. The police—”

“The police are currently taking statements at the hospital,” I interrupted, my voice dangerously low. “And the forensic unit is testing the steering wheel of your car for the blood you washed off your hands.”