Chapter 4

Sienna cut through the fence around the burned restaurant and unlocked the rear door with the blackened key.

Carrying a gas can, she disappeared into the basement.

I started recording and followed.

Charred wood and broken glass covered the stairs. From the turn, I watched her cross to the far wall and push aside the remains of my father’s wine rack.

Behind a loose metal panel was a hidden compartment.

Sienna dragged out a silver fireproof document box.

She unlocked the box. Inside were bank documents and a dark brown ledger bearing my father’s name.

Robert Bennett.

I recorded as Sienna flipped through the pages, her face growing paler. Then her phone went dark.

“Damn it.”

She returned the ledger to the box and went upstairs.

I heard her trunk open. She had gone for a lighter and the rest of the gasoline.

I rushed down and opened the ledger.

The final pages showed five transfers totaling eighty thousand dollars, all sent to an account marked S.C.—Sienna Cross.

Beside the last transfer, made one day before the fire, my father had written:

Call police Monday.

He never lived to see Monday.

The restaurant burned Sunday night.

A deposit slip was tucked inside the back cover. The account number matched the ledger, and the signature read Sienna Cross.

I photographed both and uploaded them to two private accounts.

I folded it beneath the insole of my shoe.

Footsteps sounded overhead.

I snapped the ledger shut.

Sienna stood at the basement entrance with a lighter in one hand and a gas can in the other.

“Why are you here?”

“I should be asking you that. These belonged to my father.”

She set down the gas can and strode toward me.

“Give me your phone.”

“What are you afraid I recorded?”

She lunged for it and caught my wrist, her nails biting into my skin.

“Delete it.”

“It’s already backed up. Destroying my phone won’t erase it.”

She went still, real fear in her eyes.

“You stole eighty thousand dollars,” I said.

“I never told Cole to start the fire!”

“Then why did you bring gasoline?”

“Robert wasn’t supposed to die.”

“But he did.”

I raised my phone.

“Now you can explain why to the police.”

She lunged again.

I tore free and raced upstairs as headlights swept across the ruins.

Cole’s black pickup stopped beyond the fence.

“Sienna!”

She froze at his voice, looked at him, then at me.

Suddenly she seized my wrist.

When I jerked back, she used the movement to throw herself down the stairs.

“Sienna!”

When Cole ran inside, he saw Sienna lying below and me at the top, phone still in hand.

“What did you do?”

He dropped beside her and shielded her stomach.

“It wasn’t me.”

Sienna opened her eyes, tears spilling at once.

“I only came back for a few things. Ava followed me. She said my baby was destroying your marriage.”

“She’s lying,” I said. “She came here to burn my father’s ledger. The evidence is downstairs.”

Cole never looked toward the basement.

“Does your stomach hurt?” he asked Sienna. “Are you bleeding?”

“I don’t know.” She clutched his uniform. “Is our baby going to be okay?”

Our baby.

Cole finally looked at me, anger in his eyes.

“Give me your phone, Ava.”

“If I tell you she threw herself down those stairs, will you believe me?”

He hesitated.

Only for a few seconds.

It was enough.

“No,” I said. “The evidence is already uploaded.”

Sienna groaned and clutched her stomach. Cole immediately lifted her.

Before driving away, he looked back at me.

“Go home and wait for me. Until we have her test results, stay away from Sienna.”

Then he took another pregnant woman to the hospital without looking at me again.

I stood alone outside the ruins, my father’s evidence still on my phone and beneath my foot.

A sharp pain tore through my lower abdomen.

I braced myself against a blackened wall and doubled over. At first, I blamed the stress.

Then warm liquid ran down my thigh.

I looked down.

Bright red blood dripped from the hem of my dress.

Cole still didn’t know I was pregnant.

And he had just driven another pregnant woman to the hospital.