The Account Number
Sterling didn't come to the greenhouse. He didn't come to breakfast either. By the time Weston found him, he was in their father's old study with three lawyers and a laptop open to what looked like a spreadsheet of shipping contracts, and Rosalind's warning through the door — Weston, stay out of this one — didn't stop Sterling from spotting him in the hallway.
"You're still here," Sterling said. Not a question.
"Mom asked me to stay through the reading of the estate."
"The estate's read. Shares go to me in thirty days unless some ghost investor crawls out of a numbered account, which, incidentally, my lawyers assure me doesn't happen. So you can go back to wherever it is you disappeared to."
"Sterling—"
"I don't need a lecture from the man who's been gone eleven years about what this family needs." Sterling shut the study door hard enough to rattle the glass in its frame.
Weston stood in the hallway a moment too long, long enough for Alden Voss to find him there, a folder tucked under one arm, his brown suit even more rumpled than at the funeral, like he hadn't left the office in days.
"You have a minute?" Voss asked.
They walked to the small library off the main hall, empty this time of year, dust motes turning in the window light. Voss set the folder on the reading table but didn't open it.
"I've been chasing this account for eleven years, on and off," he said. "Whoever set it up was careful. Rotating intermediary banks, no paper trail through the usual jurisdictions. But money leaves fingerprints eventually, if you know where to press."
"And you know where to press."
"I know the routing prefix. It's a Cayman code — very specific, used by a handful of maritime insurance and salvage firms, because it's built for moving large sums fast when a ship goes down and someone needs to be paid before the cargo rots or the crew mutinies." Voss finally looked up, and there was nothing accusatory in his face, only tired, careful arithmetic. "Meridian Salvage uses that prefix. I checked this morning. So does one other company in the entire registry."
He let the silence stretch just long enough to hurt.
"Which one is yours, Mr. Calder?"