My Sister’s Price
Chapter 13 - My Sister’s Price
Brooke arrived in Austin the next morning driving the white SUV.
The vehicle made a grinding sound when she turned into the Northline parking lot. One rear panel was scratched. A yellow notice from the lender had been tucked beneath the windshield wiper.
She sat inside for ten minutes before coming in.
Paula recognized her and did not smile.
“Ms. Mercer is in conference room two,” she said. “Your attorney is waiting.”
Brooke looked startled.
“My attorney?”
“Ms. Dunham arranged independent counsel for you. You should not speak to Evelyn about the lawsuit without advice.”
That was Claire’s decision. Not mine.
I wanted answers. Claire wanted answers that could survive court.
Brooke entered the conference room looking smaller than she had in my bedroom photograph. Her hair was pulled into a careless knot. She wore no makeup. For the first time in years, she did not look arranged for someone else’s approval.
Her lawyer, a young criminal-defense attorney named Sonya Reed, sat beside her.
Claire sat beside me.
A recorder rested in the center of the table.
Brooke looked at it and swallowed.
“I’m not going to jail, right?”
Sonya answered before anyone else.
“No one can promise that. Cooperation matters. Accuracy matters more.”
Brooke stared at me.
“You hired her?”
“I paid the initial consultation,” I said. “After that, she represents you, not me.”
“Why?”
“Because Mom taught us help always creates ownership. I’m not repeating that.”
Her eyes filled.
She opened a large handbag and removed two phones, a tablet, and a plastic folder.
“Everything is here.”
The declaration in Densmore’s lawsuit had been drafted by Graham Vale’s attorneys. Brooke received it the same afternoon Mom’s guardianship petition failed. Graham told her prosecutors were preparing wire-fraud charges against Harbor Family Advisory. If she signed, Densmore would classify the payments as legitimate market research and pay for her lawyer.
Mom told her I would survive the lawsuit because I was “always resourceful.”
There were those words again.
My competence used as permission to hurt me.
Brooke signed.
“What parts are false?” Claire asked.
“All of it except that Evelyn talked about infrastructure problems at dinner.”
I remembered those dinners.
I complained about cities paying consultants to document failures instead of preventing them. I never mentioned Northline, source code, clients, or Densmore data.
“Did she promise you money or shares?”
“No.”
“Did she say she took technology?”
“No.”
“Did you understand the declaration would be filed in federal court?”
Brooke looked down.
“Yes.”
“Why sign?”
Brooke pressed her hands together.
“Because I thought if I could get through one more week, Evelyn would fix it.”
The sentence was so honest it hurt worse than a lie.
She had built her adult life around my eventual intervention. Car loan, rent, jobs, legal trouble, Mom’s moods. Every bridge could be burned because I stood downstream with water.
“What did you think fixing it meant?” I asked.
“That you’d settle with Densmore. Pay back the trust. Let Mom stay in the house. Help me refinance the car. Make Dad come home.”
“All of that.”
She nodded.
“And what would you do?”
Her face crumpled.
“I don’t know.”
There was the tragedy.
Not that Brooke was incapable.
That no one had ever required capability long enough for her to discover it.
Sonya placed one of the phones into an evidence bag.
“Brooke is prepared to submit a corrected declaration and cooperate with investigators.”
Claire said, “Densmore will attack her credibility.”
“They should,” Brooke whispered. “I lied.”
I looked at her.
That was the first thing she had said that sounded like responsibility rather than fear.
She gave us messages from Graham, Mom, and Warren. One thread showed Mom negotiating Brooke’s price.
Twenty-five to her now, Mom wrote. The rest through the family trust. She spends whatever she touches.
Graham replied:
Fine. But we need access to Evelyn’s devices.
Mom answered:
Her old laptop is in the study.
My stomach tightened.
“What old laptop?” Claire asked.
“The silver one from Densmore,” Brooke said. “Mom found it in the blue box.”
I shook my head.
“My Densmore laptop was returned on my last day.”
“This one had a company sticker.”
Then I remembered.
Five years earlier, Densmore replaced my laptop after a battery failure. IT wiped the old device and allowed employees to purchase retired hardware for personal use. I bought mine for one hundred dollars, replaced the drive, and used it for household records before storing it.
“Where is it now?”
Brooke’s eyes moved toward Mom’s message thread.
“Graham’s people took it.”
Claire leaned forward.
“When?”
“The night before Evelyn was laid off. A man came to the house. Mom let him into the study.”
Dad had mentioned the dark car.
Brooke continued, “They returned the laptop the next day. Mom put it back before Evelyn got home.”
Densmore’s complaint claimed a confidential code fragment had been found on a device linked to me.
The old laptop was their bridge.
They had taken it before my termination, placed evidence on it, and then encouraged my family to break into the study after I left.
If police found the laptop in my possession, Densmore could claim I retained stolen material.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“In the study, I think.”
I called the local officer who had documented the crowbar incident. Claire requested a warrant-preservation protocol so the device could be collected without anyone altering it.
The laptop was found inside a box labeled COLLEGE PHOTOS.
A forensic image showed the disputed code file had been created at 2:16 a.m. the night the device left the house.
The login activity came from Densmore’s corporate VPN.
Graham had planted evidence.
But he had made one mistake.
The code fragment was not from Northline.
Lena recognized it immediately.
“It’s from a Densmore flood-risk tool built in 2018,” she said. “Evelyn never worked on that team.”
The employee who wrote it was a programmer named Theo Park.
Theo had resigned three months earlier and disappeared from professional networks.
When Claire reached him, he said one sentence before hanging up.
May you like
“I told Graham I wouldn’t frame her.”
Then his phone went dark.
