“How many?”
“There were three smaller transfers before the $82,000. Different descriptions. Same destination.”
I stared at the hotel wall.
“How much?”
“Total is $117,400.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
The affair, the lies, the passport, the canceled flight—all of it had suddenly become part of something larger.
Greg hadn’t simply been trying to punish me.
He had been moving pieces around.
Money.
Property.
Accounts.
And I had been the obstacle.
Martin’s voice sharpened.
“Clare, listen carefully. Do not confront Greg yet.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good. Rachel is preparing the legal steps. Ellen is securing copies of everything you can access. The bank has been notified that the transactions are disputed.”
I looked toward the windows.
Outside, the tropical morning was still bright.
People were laughing beside the pool.
Someone was carrying a tray of fruit toward a table.
The entire world continued normally while mine had quietly split open.
Then another thought occurred to me.
“Martin.”
“Yes?”
“If Greg canceled my flight yesterday afternoon, why?”
He was silent for a moment.
“Because he expected you to remain in Thailand without access to your normal accounts or documents.”
“And then?”
“He probably expected you to call him.”
I looked down at Diane’s note.
Let’s see who comes for you now.
She hadn’t written it because she wanted me frightened.
She had written it because she believed I had nobody.
But she had forgotten something.
I had spent my entire career building systems for situations exactly like this.
And Blue Lantern was never about one emergency contact.
It was about activating people who knew what to do when ordinary systems failed.
Chapter 4: Extraction
By the next morning, the consular process was underway.
The hotel had preserved the checkout records.
Knock had also made sure my room remained secure and that no one connected to Greg could access my reservation.
She had gone from front-desk employee to quiet ally.
“You were right to ask us to preserve everything,” she told me.
I gave her a tired smile.
