The old man's words hung in the air like the humid Miami night
Leah stared at Jason, the fragile moment from seconds before shattered. "David?" she repeated, the name foreign yet carrying a strange weight.
Jason's brow furrowed. "My… my childhood friend. He died when we were kids. A boating accident." His voice was distant, a ghost of the easy confidence he usually wore.
"Long thought dead," the old man had said. That wasn't a slip of the tongue.
"Who was that?" Leah asked, her cop instincts flaring.
Jason shook his head slowly. "I… I don't know. The voice was… old. Gravelly." He looked genuinely bewildered. "But David… it can't be."
Leah's mind raced. Another layer. Another secret buried beneath the Walker empire. "He knew your name. He knew David's name. And he knew enough to think you'd care."
Jason ran a hand through his hair, the weariness from the past few days etched on his face. "This is getting insane."
"It was always insane, Jason," Leah reminded him, her gaze steady. "We just keep peeling back the layers."
The burner phone. The deliberate phrasing. It felt… orchestrated. Like another piece being moved on a very dangerous board.
"We need to find out who that was," Leah said, her voice firm. "And what he knows about David."
Jason nodded, his earlier resolve returning, tinged with a new urgency. "Agreed. But first…" He gestured to the financial records scattered on the desk. "We don't forget about Andrew and 'C.W.'. That's still our primary target."
They spent the next hour poring over the documents again, this time with the added weight of the mysterious phone call. The offshore accounts seemed to snake through a labyrinth of shell corporations, each transaction more convoluted than the last. The encrypted emails were a dead end without the key.
"The 'C.W.' transactions started right around the time your father's health declined," Leah reiterated, tapping a finger on the ledger. "It's too precise to be a coincidence."
"She was positioning herself," Jason said, his jaw tight. "Taking control while he was incapacitated."
The meeting Andrew had scheduled with 'D' three days before his Mother's accident still loomed large. Who was 'D'? And what did Andrew discuss that might have led to his mother's demise, why did my father not tell me anything, All I grew up to know what my Mum died in a Car accident?
"Andrew's meeting journal," Leah said, picking up the leather-bound book. "There might be other clues."
They flipped through the pages, the dates and times blurring together. Most entries were mundane business appointments, scribbled notes about deals and acquisitions. But interspersed were more cryptic entries – single names, initials, locations.
"Here," Jason pointed to a page. A name circled in a heavier hand than the others: "Hartwell."
"Victor Hartwell," Leah murmured, recognition dawning. "Meyes… right-hand man. We saw him at the bar."
"Andrew had a meeting with him a week before mum's accident," Jason noted, his eyes narrowed. "And another one just days after."
The pieces were starting to shift, forming a more coherent, and far more sinister, picture. Meyes, Hartwell, Andrew… all seemingly involved in the events surrounding Jason's mother accident, Leah's father incident and the quest for Richard Walker's imminent decline so as to inherit the whole Walker Enterprise.
"We need to know what they discussed," Leah said. "Andrew's computer? His emails?"
Jason hesitated. "That's in his office at Walker Enterprises. Getting access won't be easy."
"We'll find a way," Leah said, her gaze determined. "We have to."
The image of the faded photograph the old man held flashed in her mind. Three boys. Jason, Andrew… and David. Alive.
"This David," Leah began, her voice thoughtful. "Why would someone think he's dead?"
Jason's expression clouded. "The boating accident… it was years ago. We were maybe ten. The boat capsized during a storm. Andrew and I made it to shore. David… they never found his body."
A wave of sadness washed over Leah. "I'm sorry, Jason."
He shrugged it off. "It was a long time ago." But the tightness around his eyes betrayed the lingering pain.
"And this old man," Leah pressed. "Why would he wait all this time to contact you?"
"I have no idea," Jason admitted. "Unless…" A thought seemed to strike him. "Unless he knew something about what happened. About David."
The possibility hung in the air, heavy with implication. Could David's supposed death be connected to the Walker family's secrets?
"We need to find this old man," Leah said. "He might hold the key to everything."
Just then, Leah's phone buzzed. It was Maya.
"Anything?" Leah answered.
"I've been digging into those offshore accounts you sent over," Maya said, her voice low and urgent. "One of them… it's linked to a series of payments made to a shell corporation registered in Jersey City."
Leah exchanged a look with Jason. Jersey City. Where the old man had called from.
"Can you get me an address?" Leah asked quickly.
"Working on it," Maya replied. "Stay safe, both of you. This feels… bigger than we thought."
Leah hung up, a sense of grim anticipation settling over her. The smoke and mirrors were starting to dissipate, revealing a darker, more complex reality beneath.
"Jersey City," she said to Jason. "That's where the call came from."
His eyes met hers, a spark of something akin to grim excitement flickering within them. "Looks like we know where we're going tomorrow."
The weight of the unknown, the resurrected past, and the tangled web of family secrets pressed in on them. But beneath it, a new kind of understanding had taken root. They were in this deeper now, bound not just by the pursuit of truth, but by a fragile, unspoken connection forged in the crucible of danger.
Tomorrow, they would chase a ghost and confront a past long thought buried. And neither of them knew what they would find waiting on the other side.