Absolute silence on the line.

Then Lauren delivered a six-word command that would shape the rest of my life. “Do not touch another single document. I’m on my way.”

Lauren arrived at 3:15 p.m. She carried no sympathy, only a scuffed leather briefcase and a legal pad. It was exactly what I needed. Pity would have broken me; strategy kept my spine steel.

“You’ve already done the grunt work,” she murmured, surveying the dining room table. “I’ve spent a decade relying on your forensic accounting, Olivia. Let’s see what you’ve found in your own backyard.”

For three grueling hours, the only sounds were the scratch of Lauren’s fountain pen and the rhythmic clicking of my keyboard. We were hunters tracking a wounded animal through a forest of numbers.

Lauren tagged every anomaly with a neon-yellow sticky note. Soon the table looked like a field of toxic dandelions. “Look at this cluster,” Lauren commanded, sliding three distinct bank statements toward me.