The latch clicked, and I drove straight to the small two-bedroom apartment on Cedar Street.

By six o’clock Thursday morning, three hundred pages of financial records covered the laminate dining table.

I pressed my thumb to the inside of my wrist, counting the beats while my eyes followed the column of figures on page forty-two.

Every wire out of our joint checking account led straight to Apex Consulting.

Three payments of twenty-seven thousand dollars, two payments of forty-one thousand, and four smaller transfers had drained out of our emergency reserves between June and October.

The yellow audit ledger held every check serial number, bank routing code and time stamp.