“Well, I’ll be darned.”

Kurt looked at the folded white lease still in his fingers, his hand trembling a little in the cold as he stared one last time at Brad’s forged cursive name.

He pressed the shaking, forged paper into my frozen hands.

By ten o’clock Monday morning, five of us were seated around the dark oak conference table in Patricia Haugen’s office in Menomonie.

Brad sat across from me in a navy blazer, tapping his gold signet ring on the polished glass tabletop.