I still remember the sound of that office door shaking downstairs.
Not somebody knocking politely either. Somebody trying the handle hard enough to rattle the glass.
I pulled the flash drive out of the computer immediately, but the monitor had already finished loading.
Folders.
Dozens of them.
Different city names. Akron. Toledo. Columbus. Lexington.
Inside each one were scanned invoices, payroll spreadsheets, and handwritten notes Leonard kept about cash payments that never matched the company books. Half the names belonged to contractors I recognized from jobs we’d worked over the years.
The envelopes from the law firms suddenly made sense too.
Leonard had been contacting attorneys before he died.
Not one attorney. Several.
Like he knew something bad was coming and didn’t know who to trust.
Downstairs the banging got louder.
Then somebody yelled my name.
Not “sir.”
Not “Mr. Harris.”
My actual name.
That scared me more than anything.
I grabbed the drive and started shoving papers back into the drawer when I noticed one final folder still open on the desktop.
“MARCH.”
The same month Leonard made me promise he “worked alone.”
Inside was security footage from the warehouse loading dock.
The timestamp was three nights before he died.
Leonard was arguing with two men beside one of our company trucks. I couldn’t hear audio, but I recognized one of them immediately.
My cousin Derek.
He handled fuel deliveries for half our job sites.
Then Leonard handed Derek a thick envelope.
Derek shoved him hard enough to hit the side of the truck.
The video froze there because somebody had paused it before.
That’s when my phone buzzed.
A text from Leonard’s wife.
“DO NOT LEAVE THROUGH THE FRONT.”
Right after that every light inside the office suddenly went dark.
And downstairs, somebody started coming up the metal stairs slowly.