Chapter 1
"Forty-eight thousand six hundred dollars is gone, Mallory."
Lacey Monroe dropped the payment printout beside my coffee.
"It went out under your name."
The room went quiet before I understood the number.
Twelve coworkers watched me take the blame.
My name was beside the payment.
"That isn't my payment," I said.
Lacey was twenty-seven and had worked under me for ten months.
"It left Northline's account at two-fourteen last Friday," she said. "Your name is on it."
Dana took off her reading glasses. She had hired me seventeen years earlier.
"Who received the money?" I asked.
Lacey tapped the center of the page. "L.M. Event Rentals."
"Northline has never used that company."
"It was added Thursday night," Kyle Benton said. "The payment went out under your name Friday."
The people I had trained lowered their eyes.
"I was across town at two-fourteen," I said. "I had a doctor's appointment."
"Could you have set up the payment before you left?" Dana asked.
"No."
The answer came out too quickly. Dana's mouth tightened.
I forced myself to slow down. "I prepared a twelve-hundred-dollar linen payment Thursday. Nothing else. Find out who added L.M."
"We will," Dana said. "Until then, I need your laptop and keycard."
Heat climbed my throat.
I had given Northline seventeen years. One line with my name on it had erased them.
The conference-room door opened.
Russell stepped in after calming the bride who had threatened to cancel.
He looked from me to the report.
"What happened?"
Nobody answered him.
"They think I sent forty-eight thousand dollars to a company I've never heard of," I said.
For one terrible second, I waited for my husband to look at the paper before he looked at me.
He didn't.
Russell crossed the room and stopped behind my chair. His hand closed around mine.
"My wife is not a thief," he said.
The pressure in my chest broke.
Russell and I had met at Northline seventeen years earlier. He knew I checked every payment twice.
For five years, every pregnancy test had been negative. On the hard nights, Russell brought home dinner, held me, and said we were still a family.
He was the man who reached for my hand when a room turned cold.
I had not known how badly I needed him to do it until he did.
Dana leaned back. "Her name is on the payment, Russell."
"Then somebody put it there." He pulled the report toward him. "Mallory was at her appointment. I dropped her there myself."
"The wedding is Saturday," Kyle said. "We can't cover the tent deposit."
"I'll cover it," Russell said. "I'll send the money from my personal account this afternoon."
Kyle stared at him. Someone near the window whispered, "He's paying it himself."
Pride moved through me so quickly it hurt.
Russell was protecting my name and the company we had built together. For one moment, I hated myself for noticing that the payment had come from the office wing where he worked.
He squeezed my hand.
"Let me handle the review," he said. "Give Dana your keycard and go home. I'll find out what happened."
I trusted that voice. It had talked frightened brides back into ballrooms and sat beside me through every piece of bad news.
So I unclipped my badge and placed it on the table.
Russell walked me to the exit with his palm between my shoulders.
"Take the back road, Mal," he said. "Get some rest. I've got you."
"Thank you," I whispered.
He kissed my forehead before returning to the meeting.
At my station wagon, I found the second copy Lacey had dropped still folded in my coat.
At the bottom was one line I had missed:
The money was sent from the computer in Russell Keane's office.
My husband had been the first person in that room to believe me.
His office stayed locked, and no one else used his computer.