"He'll empty it."
"Possibly. But transfers leave records. Cash withdrawals leave cameras and teller logs. My job is to preserve the trail. Yours is to keep looking."
Keep looking.
The instruction was so different from calm down that I nearly cried.
I returned to the box.
Grant saved almost nothing sentimental, but he kept every official envelope. Authority looked legitimate when it arrived through the mail. Near the bottom, beneath pension notices, I found a credit-union privacy statement addressed only to him.
The last four digits matched the tax return.
Inside was a notice about updated transfer limits.
It named a linked business account.
NORTH COUNTY RECOVERY SERVICES LLC.
Miriam went very still.
"Do you know it?" I asked.
"Not yet."
She searched the state business registry. The company had no public office, three layers of registered agents, and a mailing address shared by a medical-transport contractor.
Dr. Nolan Keene's clinic appeared on the contractor's website under preferred providers.
The room seemed to narrow around the screen.
"Grant said his overtime came from county assignments," I said.
Miriam turned the laptop toward me. "The county never paid him through a private recovery company."
Silas's wolf moved close enough to the surface that gold entered his eyes.
"How much?"
"We don't know the account balance," Miriam said. "We know it generated three hundred eighty-six dollars in annual interest. Conservatively, that suggests tens of thousands. Possibly more."
I thought of declined groceries. Delayed dental work. Sophie outgrowing shoes while Grant said police salaries could not stretch.
He had watched me calculate whether we could afford milk while money accumulated behind a password I did not know existed.
My anger became strangely quiet.
"Can we freeze it?"
"We can ask. The judge will want evidence the funds are marital or connected to unlawful activity."
I searched the remaining envelopes faster.
Silas reached for the box, then stopped. "May I help?"
"Yes. Look for Hawthorn, North County, Nolan, Mercer, or anything marked consulting."
He moved his chair beside mine.
Not over me. Beside.
We worked through bank notices, insurance forms, and receipts. His shoulder brushed mine once. The contact sent a pulse of warmth through the bond, sharp enough to interrupt the numbers.
Silas felt it too.
He kept reading.
That restraint was becoming its own form of seduction.
At the bottom of the second box, he found a folded deposit slip.
The amount was forty-eight hundred dollars.
The payer line read NORTH COUNTY RECOVERY.
The memo contained two words.
PATIENT TRANSFER.
No patient name. Only a six-digit number.
Miriam entered the number into her notes.
I remembered the false order, the ambulance interception, Nolan's insistence that I enter his vehicle, and Grant calling control treatment.
"This wasn't overtime," I said.
No one answered.
They did not need to.
Miriam filed the emergency preservation motion before noon. The court temporarily blocked transfers from the identified Hawthorn account pending disclosure and ordered Sophie's health coverage reinstated.
My personal account still contained eleven dollars and eighty-three cents.
But Grant no longer controlled the hidden money without anyone watching.
That evening, I found Silas in the kitchen making grilled cheese under Maeve's supervision.
"How many did you burn?"
"One."
Maeve raised two fingers behind him.
"Two," he corrected.
I sat at the counter.
"I need to ask for help."
He turned off the stove and gave me his full attention.
The old panic rose. Debt. Obligation. The invisible receipt Grant would have saved.
I pushed through it.
"Can I borrow enough for Sophie's medicine until the court restores access? I want the amount written down. I want to repay it from my account."
Silas did not tell me repayment was unnecessary.
"Yes."
He found a notebook and wrote the amount exactly as I requested.
Then he placed the pen in my hand so I could write the terms myself.
It was the least romantic thing a man had ever done for me.
I wanted to kiss him for it.
Before I could decide whether that was wise, Miriam called.
The court had preserved the Hawthorn account.
Its current balance was not tens of thousands.
It was two hundred and forty-seven thousand dollars.
And every deposit carried a different patient-transfer number.