Chapter 15 - WHAT JASON LEFT IN UNIT 44
Marissa almost hired an investigator.
Then stopped.
Nina helped her report the unauthorized storage access through proper channels.
No chasing license plates.
No showing up at Redline employees' houses.
No bringing Owen and Chloe anywhere near it.
The Subaru plate was partly readable.
Registered at the time to a fleet company.
Not useful yet.
Then Redline's old office manager, Susan Bell, called Theo.
She had heard about Prototype Seventeen.
“I think I know who cleared the unit.”
Marissa listened from Nina's conference room.
“Who?”
“I don't know the name.”
That was disappointing.
Susan continued.
Jason once gave a duplicate storage code to someone he described as:
my backup.
Not Theo.
Not Beverly.
Why?
Jason had been organizing trust and house records before his death.
He apparently worried that if anything happened to him, Beverly would take over everything before Marissa was ready.
That matched the draft estate plan.
Susan remembered Jason saying:
If I don't get the paperwork finished, somebody needs to make sure Marissa sees the box before Mom decides what it means.
Marissa's throat tightened.
“Who was somebody?”
Susan did not know.
Jason never said.
Then Susan found an old calendar entry.
Initials only:
K.L. — Unit 44 / backup docs
No phone number.
No surname.
Theo knew no K.L.
Beverly said she knew no K.L.
Marissa knew one person.
Maybe.
“Kelly Lane.”
Nina looked up.
“Who?”
A woman Jason had known before Marissa.
College friend.
Maybe ex-girlfriend.
Marissa had met her once at their wedding.
Then Kelly disappeared from their lives after an argument with Jason around Chloe's birth.
Marissa had assumed friendship ended.
“What argument?”
Nina asked.
“I don't know.”
“Jason never told you?”
“He said Kelly crossed a line.”
“What line?”
“He wouldn't say.”
Marissa hated how familiar that answer now sounded.
They located Kelly Lane easily.
She was not missing.
Not dead.
She taught high school art outside Providence.
Nina sent a neutral inquiry through counsel.
No accusations.
Two days later, Kelly responded.
One sentence:
I did not send Marissa the device.
Then:
But I know what box Jason meant.
Marissa stared.
A third sentence arrived.
Before I tell her anything, ask Beverly to produce the letter Jason gave her the week Owen was born.
Marissa looked at Nina.
“What letter?”
Beverly's attorney answered the next morning.
Beverly admitted there had been one.
She claimed she no longer had it.
Jason wrote it after Owen's birth.
Not about money.
Not about the trust.
About Marissa.
Beverly remembered only part.
If anything happens to me, do not make her feel like needing help means you own her.
Marissa closed her eyes.
That sounded like him.
“What else?”
Beverly looked through the video screen.
“There was something about Kelly.”
Marissa opened her eyes.
“What?”
“I don't remember.”
“Try.”
Beverly's face tightened.
“He said if Kelly contacted you, I was not to interfere.”
“Why would Kelly contact me?”
“I don't know.”
“Did you interfere?”
Beverly looked away.
That was enough.
“When?”
“Years ago.”
Marissa went completely still.
“What did she send?”
“A letter.”
“To me?”
“Yes.”
“Did I get it?”
“No.”
There.
Another decision made for her.
“Why?”
Beverly's voice became defensive.
“You were in rehabilitation. Jason said Kelly had caused problems. I thought—”
“You thought.”
Beverly stopped.
“What was in it?”
“I didn't open it.”
Marissa almost laughed.
“Where is it?”
“I returned it.”
“To Kelly?”
“Yes.”
Nina asked for documentation.
Beverly had none.
Then Kelly's attorney sent one photograph.
An old envelope.
Unopened.
Return stamp.
Addressed to Marissa at the rehabilitation hospital.
Handwriting on the back:
Jason is wrong about why I left. When you're ready, ask him what happened the night Chloe was born.
Marissa stared.
Chloe was six.
Jason had been alive for five years after Chloe's birth.
Marissa had never known there was a question about that night.
She remembered labor.
An emergency C-section.
Jason beside her.
Beverly in the waiting room.
Kelly briefly visiting the next morning.
Then nothing.
Or almost nothing.
One memory returned.
Jason and Kelly arguing quietly near the hospital elevator.
Kelly saying:
She deserves to know.
Jason answering:
Not today.
Marissa had assumed they meant some stupid friendship issue.
Maybe they had.
Maybe grief and months of secrets were teaching her to turn every memory into a clue.
She refused to do that.
Nina asked:
“Do you want us to contact Kelly?”
Marissa looked through the window of the conference room.
Paige was outside with Owen and Chloe.
Chloe had convinced Owen to wear a paper crown.
Owen was making the crown attack a stuffed dinosaur.
Normal.
Beautifully normal.
“Yes.”
Then:
“Not tonight.”
Nina nodded.
The immediate crisis was no longer a mystery.
Beverly had abused the children.
She was facing consequences.
Marissa had threatened her with an unknown device and had accepted consequences for that too.
The trust money belonged to the family it was created to support.
Beverly had not stolen a fortune, but she had used financial authority to pressure Marissa.
That authority was gone.
The children were safe.
The house was being adapted.
Those truths stayed true.
But one question remained inside everything Jason left unfinished.
Someone had retrieved his old theatrical device from a storage unit.
Someone had mailed it to Marissa on the exact morning Beverly finally crossed the line far enough that police, courts, lawyers, and trustees all entered the picture.
Kelly claimed she had not sent it.
Beverly claimed she had not.
Theo had not.
And the only person who might have arranged it in advance had been dead fourteen months.
Marissa looked again at Kelly's returned envelope.
Ask him what happened the night Chloe was born.
Then at the photograph of Prototype Seventeen.
Maybe the device had been sent to frighten Beverly.
Maybe to force Marissa to ask questions.
Maybe the timing had been coincidence.
This time, Marissa refused to let fear choose the answer before the evidence did.
But she was finally ready to ask.
May you like
Who had sent Jason's fake bomb—
and why had they waited until now to give Marissa something Beverly was terrified to see again?
