Chapter 21 - THE DINER
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Sarah waited in the back booth of a 24-hour diner on the edge of the county line. At 11:45 PM, the bell above the door chimed. Mark slid into the booth opposite her, looking over his shoulder.
He placed his heavy metal work laptop on the Formica table between them.
"Dave called me," Mark said, his voice barely a whisper. "He said you came to his house."
"He said Apex Logistics is a concrete supplier," Sarah replied. "Is it?"
Mark closed his eyes. "I checked the physical address on the invoices today. It’s a UPS store mailbox. I pulled the state incorporation records. The company was registered in Delaware three years ago."
"By who?"
"An LLC managed by Claire M. Hayes," Mark said. "My stepmother’s maiden name."
The diner felt suddenly very cold.
"She’s been siphoning the money into a crypto wallet," Mark continued, his voice trembling. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars. I confronted her about the missing funds the morning of the... the incident. I told her I was going to call an auditor."
Sarah felt a horrific sense of clarity wash over her. "She hid a hardware wallet in a titanium capsule. That’s what she dropped in the toilet. Mark, she wasn't trying to kill Lily. She was trying to flush the evidence before you could find it."
Mark looked at her, his eyes shining with unshed tears. For the first time in four days, he didn't look at her like she was a monster. He looked at her like a husband.
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"Take the laptop," Mark whispered, sliding it across the table. "The ledgers are downloaded. But Sarah... if she was just trying to flush a flash drive, how did Lily get in the water?"
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