Chapter 5: The Contents
I opened the medical envelope first.
The documents inside confirmed what the copy I had obtained three weeks earlier had already shown me. During a visit Kenneth had scheduled and driven me to in the second year of our marriage—presented at the time as a routine women’s health screening—an additional procedure had been performed under the same anesthesia. The consent form on file carried a signature that was not mine. The handwriting analysis I had commissioned privately matched Kenneth’s. The clinical effect had been permanent. I had been told afterward that certain results were “inconclusive” and that further discussion could wait. I had trusted the man who sat beside my recovery chair and held my hand.
I set the papers down and opened the first external drive on the secure laptop I had brought with me. The directory structure was careful but not careful enough. Transfer logs. Client lists that matched restricted internal databases. Pricing models from a competitive strategy session that had been board-confidential. A folder labeled simply with a year and the word “exit.”
Justin read over my shoulder as I moved through the files. His breathing changed once, sharply, when he reached the message thread between Kenneth and a contact marked only by initials. The language was commercial and cold. Rollins Global intellectual property had been priced, packaged, and partially delivered.
“He was selling us,” Justin said.
“He was selling the parts he could reach,” I corrected. “And he was using the marriage as the access credential.”
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The wire confirmations matched the amounts the private investigator had already flagged in the subsidiary accounts. The second phone contained encrypted messaging apps and a short list of contacts that would require formal forensic handling. I imaged every device on the spot, sealed the originals into evidence bags I had brought from the same investigator’s supply kit, and labeled them with time, date, and location.
By 5:40 a.m. the safe was empty of anything that could still protect Kenneth Rollins.
