Chapter 1 - THE CARD SHE TOOK WHILE I SLEPT
At 6:12 on Sunday morning, my phone vibrated so hard against the nightstand that it woke both me and my husband.
$2,846.17.
Then another alert.
$1,973.62.
Then:
$4,181.40.
Michael rolled toward me, still half asleep.
“What is it?”
I opened the transaction list.
Children’s designer clothing.
Airline tickets.
More clothing.
Nearly nine thousand dollars charged between 3:08 and 5:41 that morning.
We were staying at Michael’s father’s mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, after a charity gala the night before. Twenty relatives had slept over rather than drive home after drinking.
My purse had been downstairs in the kitchen.
I was halfway out of bed when I remembered something important.
The platinum card in that purse was not my personal credit card.
It was issued to me by the New York Sentinel, where I worked as an investigative reporter.
My name was printed on it because I was the authorized employee.
The account belonged to my employer.
I went downstairs and found Diana surrounded by shopping bags.
Michael’s thirty-six-year-old sister was still wearing the glittering dress from the gala. Her hair looked slept in, but she had somehow found the energy to shop before sunrise.
My platinum card lay beside her coffee.
“Diana.”
She looked at it.
Then at me.
No embarrassment.
“I was going to tell you.”
I picked up the card.
“You took this from my purse.”
“The kids needed things.”
“At three in the morning?”
“There was a sale.”
Michael appeared behind me.
“What did you do?”
Diana stood and lunged toward my phone when she saw the alerts.
“Give me that phone. Nine grand is nothing to you.”
I pulled it away.
She grabbed my wrist.
I twisted free.
Her father entered as voices rose.
Robert Hayes was sixty-seven, recently retired from the logistics company he had built from one delivery truck into a regional operation.
“What’s going on?”
“Your daughter stole my card.”
“Lauren,” he said immediately, “Diana would never steal from family.”
That sentence almost made me laugh.
Diana reached for my handbag.
I pulled it away. Her hip struck the breakfast island, knocking a frying pan from the edge. It tipped over her hair and shoulder, covering one side of her glittering dress in cold scrambled eggs.
She dropped to one knee, furious.
“You’ll forgive me when Dad tells you to.”
Robert moved between us.
“My daughter would never steal from family.”
I turned the card between two fingers.
Then I handed him my phone.
“That’s the problem, Diana.”
I held the platinum card beside the transaction alerts.
“It wasn’t my card.”
Robert’s face changed first.
Michael looked from the corporate markings to his sister.
Diana stopped wiping eggs from her hair.
“Whose is it?”
“My employer’s.”
The kitchen suddenly felt much smaller.
My phone sounded again.
Not another purchase.
A fraud alert from the Sentinel’s corporate-card administrator.
Diana stared at me.
“Tell them it was you.”
Robert looked at his daughter.
“Diana.”
Her expression told me something worse than theft had just happened.
May you like
She wasn’t surprised that she had used a corporate account.
She was surprised that I refused to lie about it.
Related Stories
