Chapter 4 - The Paper TrailHours later, the house was a scene of clinical investigation. Mrs. Price was found in the cellar, disoriented but unhurt. The man—a disgraced former estate lawyer named Arthur Sterling—had been building a case to declare the boy, Evan, his ward through forged documents, using Mrs. Price’s home as his base of operations to drain her assets.
I sat with Evan in the back of an ambulance. He finally started to talk. He explained how Sterling had been his mother’s boyfriend, how she had left him with Sterling for "the weekend," and how he had been forced to witness the terrifying process of forging signatures and stealing documents.
"He said if I didn't sign, he’d take me away from the only person who was ever nice to me," Evan whispered.
That "person" was Mrs. Price. She had been secretly looking after the boy, feeding him when his mother didn't, giving him a place to hide. Sterling had found out and decided to use both of them to secure his own future.
