Chapter 4 - The Bait

The next morning, the sun rose over Boise under a blanket of heavy grey clouds.

Millie was sitting at the kitchen table, eating chocolate chip pancakes. The red mark on her cheek had faded into a faint yellowish bruise, but her eyes were bright. She was giggling as she made Barnaby the bunny 'dance' across the syrup-stained plate.

I sat next to her, running my fingers through her soft hair. "How are you feeling, sweetie?"

"Good, Daddy," she said, looking up at me. "Are we going to see Grandma and Grandpa today?"

"No, baby," I said gently. "We’re going to spend the day together. Just you, me, and Uncle Marcus."

"Yay!" she cheered, hugging the plush rabbit tightly.

At 10:00 AM, my phone began ringing. The caller ID displayed: DAD.

I let it ring until the very last second before sliding the screen to answer. I put it on speaker so Marcus, who was sitting across the table with his recording gear setup, could hear everything.

"Hello?" I said, keeping my voice sounding tired, hesitant, and broken—the exact tone they had grown used to over two years.

"David!" my father’s voice boomed through the speaker, laced with forced concern. "Thank God you answered. Your mother has been sick with worry all night!"

"I don't want to talk right now, Dad," I muttered, playing the role of the defeated son. "I told you to leave us alone."

"David, please, listen to reason," Arthur said, his tone shifting into that smooth, patronizing register he always used when he wanted to dominate a conversation. "What happened yesterday was a terrible misunderstanding. Evelyn feels awful about how things escalated. She was just stressed about her business files."

"She hit my daughter, Dad."

"She reacted poorly to a child grabbing her private papers, David!" Arthur barked, his impatience slipping through. "Millie shouldn't have been digging through her purse! Look, we need to sit down like a family and smooth this over. We can't have you running around making wild accusations to neighbors."

"I have nothing to say to Evelyn," I said.

"David," Arthur’s voice dropped, taking on a subtle, menacing edge. "Remember who pays for your mortgage extensions. Remember who manages Millie’s education trust fund. If you go making trouble, Harrison will freeze the discretionary payouts from the trust. You won't have a dime to pay for Millie’s private school or her medical insurance."

I looked at Marcus, who gave me a sharp nod.

"What do you want, Dad?" I asked, letting my voice fake a slight tremor.

"Come to my office at the estate tonight at 7:00 PM," Arthur commanded. "Just you. Leave Millie with a sitter. Evelyn will be there, Harrison will be there, and we will sign an agreement clarifying family harmony and trust distributions. We put this ugly incident behind us."

"And if I don't come?"

"If you don't come," Arthur sneered quietly, "Harrison files an emergency motion in family court tomorrow morning questioning your parental competency based on your history of severe depression after Hannah's death. You won't like how that ends, son."

A cold rage burned in my gut, but I kept my voice weak. "Fine. 7:00 PM. But I want guarantees about Millie's trust."

"You'll get what we decide to give you," Arthur said before hanging up the phone.

The line went dead.

Marcus immediately cut the recording. "He took the bait. He thinks he’s cornering you to sign a non-disclosure and liability release regarding the assault."

"He thinks I'm going there alone and scared," I said, standing up from the table. "He doesn't know that I’m bringing the Idaho State Police and the FBI Financial Crimes division with me."

Earlier that morning, while Millie was eating breakfast, Marcus had made calls to his contacts in the State Attorney General’s office. The combination of the Barnaby audio file—which contained a explicit threat regarding a deceased person—and Marcus’s paper trail showing five million dollars moved into an offshore account had immediately caught the attention of federal investigators.

"Detective Vance from the state police team will be monitoring your wire," Marcus said, hand-delivering a tiny button-camera and micro-microphone to clip inside my jacket lapel. "You go in, get Arthur and Evelyn to explicitly admit to the trust theft or the surveillance, and we move in."

"What about Hannah's car crash?" I asked.

"The state police have re-opened the impound investigation file from two years ago," Marcus revealed, his eyes dark. "They found something strange in the original mechanic’s report that was suppressed by the county coroner back then: the brake lines on Hannah's SUV hadn't failed due to wear. They were precision-cut."

The air left my lungs.

My wife hadn't lost control on a slippery road. She had been executed.

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I looked down at the tiny microphone in my palm.

"Tonight," I whispered, "it all ends."