As we left the station, Miles’ phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen and his face went tight.
“What?” I asked.
He turned the phone toward me.
It was an email notification—from a digital document service.
Subject: Power of Attorney Signed.
And in the preview line, it showed the signer name.
Mine.
I stared until my vision blurred, my chest tightening like someone had wrapped a cord around it.
Because Kara hadn’t only planned to kill our parents.
She’d planned to make it look like I helped.
Part 10
I didn’t remember walking to the car.
One moment I was standing outside the police station, holding my breath against the cold, and the next I was in the passenger seat with the door shut, the world muffled and too close.
Miles’ hands hovered near the steering wheel like he wasn’t sure whether to drive or pull me into his arms first.
“That email doesn’t mean it’s real,” he said carefully. “It could be attempted. It could be spoofed.”
“But it said signed,” I whispered. My voice sounded far away. “It said my name.”
Miles stared straight ahead, jaw tight. “This is what she does. She builds a story. She sets pieces in place.”
I thought of my mom’s ripped note: Don’t trust—
My stomach rolled. “She was warning me,” I said. “She was warning me and I was busy. I was… living.”
Miles reached over and squeezed my hand. His palm was warm, steady. “We’re not going to let Kara write the ending.”
At home, my inbox had three more notifications—document requests, signature reminders, a final notice that made my skin crawl.
Miles opened them on his laptop, not letting me touch the mouse like I might contaminate the evidence.
The documents were dated for the week my parents collapsed. The IP addresses—whatever that meant—weren’t from my apartment. The phone number attached to the account wasn’t mine.
But the signature field showed a scrawl that looked disturbingly close to my handwriting. Close enough to fool someone who wanted to be fooled.
I pressed my fingers to my temple. My head felt full of cotton. “How did she even—”
Miles’ eyes flicked up. “She’s watched you sign things your entire life. Birthday cards. Holiday checks. She’s had access to your mail. Your old school forms. She could’ve practiced.”
Practice. Like forging my identity was a hobby.
Hollis called us in again that evening. The office smelled like burnt coffee and stale air, like nobody had slept there in weeks.
He studied the digital forms and nodded slowly. “This is good for us,” he said.
“Good?” I snapped, surprise turning to anger. “How is this good?”
“Because it proves premeditation,” Hollis said, calm. “Kara and Owen weren’t improvising. They were building legal cover. They were preparing to move assets fast. And they were preparing a scapegoat.”
My throat tightened. “Me.”
Hollis held my gaze. “Yes. But they did it sloppily. The metadata points away from you. We can show it wasn’t you.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted the world to be the kind of place where truth automatically won.
But I’d just learned how easy it was to remove two batteries and almost erase two lives.
Back at my parents’ apartment, my mom sat at the small kitchen table with a pen in her hand. She wasn’t writing. She was just holding it, staring at the blank page like she was trying to force reality to make sense.
“I keep thinking,” she said softly, “if I could just talk to her… maybe she’d tell me why.”
My dad’s face tightened. “We know why.”
My mom’s eyes flashed. “No,” she whispered. “I know what you’re saying. Money. The house. But why did she become… that.”
I sat down across from her, the chair legs scraping lightly. “Mom—”
She lifted her hand, stopping me. Her fingers trembled. “She’s still my daughter.”
The sentence landed heavy.
My dad’s voice was low, rough. “So is Jamie.”
My mom flinched, tears slipping out anyway. “I’m not choosing,” she said, voice breaking. “I’m just… I need to see her face and hear her say it.”
My stomach twisted. “You want to visit her?”
My mom’s gaze lifted to mine. “Just once. I need… closure.”
I imagined Kara behind a glass partition, her eyes calculating, her voice soft and poisonous. I imagined her turning my mother’s love into a weapon.
