Brandon's POV
Every answer we uncovered seemed to give birth to three more questions.
The files lay scattered across the table between Ashley and me like pieces of a puzzle someone had deliberately smashed apart. Financial statements. Phone records. Photocopies of old police reports. Names highlighted in yellow. Others blacked out completely. Dates circled in red ink.
I had spent the last two hours trying to force them into a story that made sense.
But I couldn't.
The more I read, the less I understood.
Mum's name kept surfacing in places it shouldn't have.
So did the Hawkins'.
There were payments that disappeared into companies I'd never heard of. Phone records linking people who, on the surface, had no business speaking to one another. Missing pages. References to files that weren't even in front of us.
It was as though someone had intentionally left breadcrumbs while making sure nobody could ever find the loaf.
