I slid into the booth across from her and skipped the greeting. “Tell me everything.”

She flinched, then reached into an oversized tote and pulled out a thick navy folder and a silver flash drive, pushing them across the table, her hands shaking so badly the folder tapped the wood.

“I handled the bookkeeping for Colton’s printing company,” she said, breathless. “I swear, Mrs. Hayes, at first I didn’t know. I thought you were just a generous mother keeping his dream afloat. He told me you were an angel. But then the numbers stopped making sense.”

I opened the folder. Inside were credit agreements, high-interest leases for commercial printers that didn’t exist, short-term business loans.

At the bottom of the first page, on the guarantor line, was my name. Loretta Hayes. “I didn’t sign this,” I said quietly.

“I know.” She swallowed. “He photographed your driver’s license, your utility bills, your old tax returns when you weren’t looking. He practiced your signature for weeks. The curves are just slightly wrong, but to a predatory lender it looks perfect. Whenever a bank got suspicious about the company’s revenue, he played the sick card — told them his wealthy mother was covering everything because she’d never let her dying son fail.”