Page 22 of The Exit Strategy

Tucking that observation into a vault of things I shouldn’t know about him, I open the next spreadsheet.

“Mail’s here,” Nana Mae says with a bright smile. “Oh, Cole. Natalie sent another?—”

Cole aggressively snatches the mail from Nana Mae’s hands. That’s when I register her words.

Natalie. As in, Cole’s ex and the biggest bully of my entire life. Because why wouldn’t life throw those two thingsat me in one bitter package and not expect me to turn out as I have?

I don’t know the exact trigger, but somewhere around my fifteenth birthday, Natalie went from silently glaring at me to a full-time bully who thrived in the shadows of my home.

“Natalie?” My voice croaks. “You’re still?—”

“No.” Cole cuts me off. “Natalie and I haven’t been together since I was in Boston. But she sends me updates on her little brother sometimes.”

He stuffs the letter into his back pocket and storms into the kitchen, taking his lie-coated excuse with him.

Nana Maetsks but says nothing as she hands me a stack of bills, then makes her way outside.

Fucking trauma triggers, and fuck Cole for never seeing the truth. I slam another folder open on the table and take all my anger out on numbers…because numbers never lie.

By eleven,I think I’ve found another problem.

Not a mistake. Not an oversight.

A possible pattern.

Devin—Mae’s nephew, and former CFO whose filing system I can only describe as what happens when a weasel earns an MBA from a diploma mill—didn’t just mismanage The Haven’s finances. He dismantled them. Methodically. Over months.

Yesterday, I found what I think are forged signatures and invoices paid twice to a company I can’t prove even exists. Today, I found something…worse.

There’s a line item labeled “community enrichment” that appears to be siphoning $4,000 a month into anaccount I can’t trace from here. Four thousand freaking dollars. Every month. For the last year!

That’s $48,000 that should’ve gone to maintaining homes, the clubhouse, common areas—all the places these people live and love. The places they’ve entrusted Cole to protect.

Leaning back in my chair, I press my pen against my lips until I’m sure the cap has left a mark.

It’s all here, just waiting for someone to put the pieces together. I can feel it. I just can’tseeit yet, and that pisses me off.

But the worst part of it all is, if I’m right, Devin built every breadcrumb to look as though it leads right back to Cole. It’s in his name. It’s his approvals on documents I’m betting he never saw. If anyone audited The Haven right now, they wouldn’t find Devin’s fingerprints.

They’d find Cole’s.

And he knows it. I read it on his face when I told him there was a pattern of behavior. He wasn’t surprised, he was…relieved? Resigned? He looked as though he’d been carrying the weight of it, just waiting for someone to finally confirm it.

So why hasn’t he done anything about it?

Standing from my desk, I plan to do some digging.

I find him near the coffee and smirk. He’s already on his second pot, and it’s not even noon. The decaf is clearly doing its job because there’s a slowness to his movements that’s new.

Good, I think. Then immediately feel like a jerk. But only a small jerk. Medium jerk at most.

“When did Devin actually leave?” I ask, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed. I keep my posture intentionally professional.

Cole jumps and uses two hands to steady his coffee. He can’t already be going through caffeine withdrawals, can he?

The pinch of his brow and the shakiness of his hands indicate he might be. And if that’s the case, then I’m actually doing him a favor. Caffeine addiction is one he should curb anyway. It totally messes with your nervous system.

“Six months ago.” His eyebrow twitches as he speaks.