The Mercer family’s former insurer reopened the archived fire claim. Everything seemed to be moving toward an ending.

But Martin stayed uneasy. He kept working through the copies from the lockbox. At 8:40 a.m., he found a page that didn’t match the others — folded inside the back cover of the ledger.

It held six account numbers, four dates, and a list of initials. Most of the initials belonged to people already connected to Ethan’s companies. One set didn’t.

D.R.

My initials.

I assumed Ethan had added them to make me look involved. Martin disagreed. The handwriting wasn’t Ethan’s. It was older, in dark blue ink instead of black.