Chapter Three: Her Office, Her Secrets
1098 Words
The house had never felt this quiet.
Not after a long day in court. Not after the funeral. Not even in those first few days when the casseroles stopped showing up and the phone calls slowed to a trickle. This quiet was deeper. Like it had seeped into the walls themselves.
Hank shut the front door behind him and stood in the foyer for a moment, his hand still on the knob. He didn’t move. Just listened to the stillness. Outside, a breeze rustled the trees. A neighbor’s dog barked in the distance. Inside, nothing. Not even the ticking of the clock in the den—he hadn’t reset it since the battery died.
He walked slowly through the hallway, his fingers grazing the molding on the wall like he needed to touch something to prove it was real. The house still smelled like her—lavender and clean laundry and coffee. He wasn’t sure how long that would last.
Celeste’s office sat at the end of the hall, across from their bedroom. The door had been closed since the day she died. Hank hadn’t touched it. Couldn’t bring himself to. Every time he passed it, he imagined her sitting inside, hunched over her desk, scribbling notes, filing papers, humming under her breath when she thought no one was listening.
She always said she liked the office because of the light. “Golden in the morning,” she’d told him once. “The kind of light that makes you feel like something good could happen.”
Today it was cloudy.
He reached for the knob.
The door opened with a soft creak.
The room smelled like dust and her favorite sandalwood candle. The blinds were drawn halfway, slats casting long shadows across the bookshelves and the desk. Papers sat in neat stacks. A corkboard hung above the filing cabinet, covered in pushpins and scribbled notes—mostly client names, appointment reminders, phone numbers. There was nothing that screamed “danger,” nothing that looked like a threat.
Which made the growing pit in Hank’s stomach feel even more irrational.
He moved slowly, almost reverently, running his fingers across the back of her desk chair, the edge of her laptop, the notebooks stacked neatly in the corner. He opened one.
Names. Dates. Notes about a woman cheating on her husband with the gym trainer. A life insurance policy dispute. A roommate stealing from a disabled veteran. It was the work he’d always assumed she did—low-risk, quietly noble. Helping people no one else would notice.
But now he wasn’t so sure that was the whole story.
He opened another notebook. This one was different. The handwriting was tighter. Focused. Every note was clean, almost clinical.
Donnie Cutter.
The name hit him like a brick to the chest.
He sat down hard in her desk chair, his fingers going clammy as he turned the page.
Followed him three times—Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday. Never alone. Bar on Fuller, 10 p.m. Two men, possible muscle. Same SUV each time. No license plate visible.
Hank’s pulse kicked up. He flipped through the rest of the notebook, page after page of observations. Donnie at the gym. Donnie at a warehouse outside of town. Donnie arguing with a man in a black hat and gray jacket. Notes about a possible connection to Wyatt Kerrigan—a name Hank had only heard whispered in the courthouse halls. Kerrigan was the kind of name you didn’t say too loud. He wasn’t a client. He was a ghost—one tied to construction rackets, bribery, and rumors of much worse.
Celeste had written the name twice. Circled it once.
Hank stood abruptly, scanning the room like he expected someone to leap out of the shadows. He crossed to the filing cabinet and started pulling drawers open. Most of the files were standard—background checks, surveillance photos, printed emails—but tucked near the back of the bottom drawer was a manila envelope, thick with documents.
He laid it on the desk and opened it.
Inside were photos.
Donnie, standing outside the warehouse Celeste had written about. Donnie, exchanging something with a man whose face was half-obscured by a ball cap.
Then one that made Hank stop cold.
Kerrigan.
The photo was grainy, taken from a distance, but there was no mistaking the man. Square-jawed, sharp-eyed, the faint scar on his chin. He stood in front of a black Escalade, laughing with Donnie and another man Hank didn’t recognize. The time stamp on the photo was three weeks before Celeste’s death.
Hank dropped into the desk chair again, staring at the image.
What the hell were you doing, Celeste?
He glanced around the office. It was as if she had left the door open for him on purpose. Left this paper trail. This silent message. She had known something. She had seen something. And she had tried—quietly, carefully—to find proof.
But proof of what?
That Donnie was a runner for someone higher up the chain? That Wyatt Kerrigan was involved in something Celeste had gotten too close to?
Hank’s phone buzzed on the desk, snapping him out of the spiral. He glanced at the screen—text from his investigator.
Still working on the warehouse footage. One camera was wiped. Looks intentional.
Wiped. Hank’s hands clenched around the edge of the desk.
Someone had gone to great lengths to erase their tracks.
He looked back at the photo of Kerrigan, then to Celeste’s scrawled notes.
She hadn’t been chasing insurance fraud this time.
She’d been hunting something real.
Something dangerous.
And Hank had been too blind—or too naive—to see it. He’d thought she was safe. He’d thought she handled low-risk clients, cases that barely made a ripple in the world.
But she had walked straight into the fire.
And now, the trail she left behind was leading him there too.
He picked up the photo and stared at Kerrigan’s face. The man had money, reach, protection. If he was involved, Hank wasn’t just dealing with a thug like Donnie anymore.
He was staring down a man with real power.
A man worth killing for.
And Celeste had gotten too close.
Hank swallowed hard. He didn’t know how deep this went. He didn’t know who else was involved. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
This wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
And the only way to honor her now was to keep going.
Even if it meant stepping into the dark she’d died trying to expose.
- Writer
