Chapter 2 - The Notary Who Was Scared For Her Life
I spent the next three hours on the phone, pacing the shelter’s parking lot while Emily sat on the bench feeding the twins a bottle of formula a local church had donated. First, I called David Reynolds, my PI, and told him everything Ashley had dropped on us—the restraining order, the forged custody papers, the 48-hour deadline. He didn’t say anything for a full ten seconds, which was long enough to make my stomach drop into my boots.
“Michael,” he said finally, his voice tight. “That custody order? It’s real. I just pulled it up on the county clerk’s website. Signed by Judge Eleanor Voss this morning at 9:17 a.m. Temporary emergency custody to Ashley Bennett, effective immediately.”
“Real? How the hell is it real if the papers are forged?” I yelled, kicking a loose rock across the gravel so hard it bounced off the side of the shelter. A stray cat took off running for the woods. “She faked Emily’s signature, David. That’s a felony. Why would a judge sign off on that without even talking to Emily?”
“Because Ashley didn’t just bring the forged termination papers,” David said. “She brought sworn statements from two ‘witnesses’ saying Emily was using meth while she was pregnant, that she’d left the twins alone in a hot car for two hours last month, that she’d been arrested for shoplifting baby clothes three times. All of it’s bullshit, I’m sure—but on paper? It looks like Emily is the worst mother in the state of Georgia. And Judge Voss? She’s up for re-election in November. She’s built her whole campaign on ‘protecting innocent kids from unfit parents.’ She signs 90 percent of emergency custody orders that cross her desk without a hearing. It’s faster that way. Looks better on her campaign flyers.”
I leaned against the hood of my SUV, my head in my hands. “So what do we do? We have 48 hours before Ashley comes back with the sheriff to take the twins. If we don’t get that order thrown out by then—”
“We don’t need 48 hours,” David cut in. “We need 24. I already ran the notary who signed those papers. Maria Gonzalez, 38, lives in a little apartment off Highway 41 in Macon. She’s got a 10-year-old daughter, works part-time at a check-cashing place, does notary work on the side for extra cash. No criminal record. No history of fraud. But I pulled her bank records—$5,000 deposited into her account five days before those papers were signed. Cash. From a branch right down the street from Ashley’s condo.”
My head snapped up. “You think Ashley paid her?”
“I know she did,” David said. “And I think Maria’s scared. She hasn’t been to work in two days. Her daughter hasn’t been to school. Her neighbors said a big guy with a neck tattoo matching Ashley’s brother, Tyler, was parked outside her apartment yesterday for three hours. She’s hiding, Michael. And if we can find her before Tyler does, before Ashley gets to her again… she’ll talk. People don’t risk their kids for $5,000 unless someone is making them. Or unless they think they have no other choice.”
“Send me her address,” I said, already unlocking my SUV. “I’m going to Macon right now.”
“Wait,” David said. “Don’t go alone. Tyler Bennett’s got a record for aggravated assault. He did three years for beating a guy half to death in a bar fight over a $20 bet. If he’s there—”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I grew up fighting guys twice Tyler’s size on construction sites. Just send the address. And call my lawyer—Sarah Chen. Tell her everything. Tell her I need her in court tomorrow morning first thing to file an emergency motion to vacate the custody order. Tell her to bring every piece of evidence we have on Ashley. The fake affair photos. The bank records. the security footage of her planting my mom’s necklace. All of it.”
I hung up, shoving my phone back in my pocket, and walked over to the bench where Emily was sitting. She looked up, her eyes red from crying, and I hated that I was the reason she’d had to cry so much over the last year. “I have to go to Macon for a few hours. There’s a woman who can prove those papers are fake. I need to talk to her before Ashley gets to her.”
Emily tensed, shifting the twins higher in her arms. “Macon? That’s two hours away. What if Ashley comes back while you’re gone?”
“The shelter manager said she’ll call the sheriff the second Ashley pulls into the lot,” I said. “And I called my cousin, Jake—he’s a cop with the county sheriff’s department. He’s going to send a patrol car to sit out front all night. No one’s getting in here to hurt you or the twins, Emily. I promise.” I hesitated, then pulled my wallet out of my pocket, handing her the only photo I had of the two of us—our wedding day, standing on the beach in Savannah, both of us laughing so hard we could barely look at the camera. I’d carried it in my wallet every day since the divorce, even when I thought she’d betrayed me. “If you need anything—anything at all—you call me. Day or night. My phone’s not going on silent. Not ever again.”
She took the photo, her fingers brushing mine, and for a second I thought she was going to say something—something that would make the last year disappear, something that would let us go back to the way things were before Ashley. But she just nodded, tucking the photo into the pocket of her worn flannel shirt. “Be careful, Michael. Ashley’s brother… he’s dangerous. I saw him once, outside the motel I was staying at when I was eight months pregnant. He was just sitting in his truck, watching me. I didn’t sleep for three days after that.”
My jaw tightened. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”
I drove to Macon fast, pushing my SUV 10 miles over the speed limit the whole way, the red Georgia clay blurring past the windows. I thought about Emily, pregnant and alone, scared of a man who’d been paid to terrorize her. I thought about the twins, born into a world where their own father had abandoned them, where a stranger wanted to steal them just to hurt their mom. I thought about Ashley, sitting in her fancy condo, drinking wine and planning how to take everything I loved, and I felt a rage burn in my chest so hot I thought I might pass out.
I found Maria’s apartment just as the sun was going down, a small second-floor unit in a beat-up complex with a cracked pool out front and laundry lines strung between the buildings. I parked down the street, walking up the stairs slowly, my hand resting on the heavy-duty flashlight I kept in my jacket pocket—just in case Tyler was there. I knocked on the door three times, soft at first, then louder.
No answer.
I leaned in, pressing my ear to the door. I heard the soft sound of a kid’s cartoon on TV, then a woman’s voice whispering, “Stay quiet, mija. It’s okay. Don’t make a sound.”
“Maria?” I called, keeping my voice low, calm. “My name is Michael Carter. I’m not here to hurt you. I know Ashley Bennett paid you to sign those custody papers. I know her brother has been threatening you. I can help you. I can keep you and your daughter safe. But I need you to talk to me.”
Silence for a long minute. Then the lock clicked, and the door opened an inch, a chain still across the frame. A woman with dark hair pulled back in a messy bun, dark circles under her eyes, peeked out. She was holding a baseball bat in one hand, her knuckles white around the handle. “How do I know you’re not working for her? How do I know you’re not here to hurt Lila?”
“Because if I was working for Ashley, I wouldn’t have knocked,” I said, holding my hands up so she could see I wasn’t carrying a gun. “I would have kicked the door down an hour ago. Look—here’s my driver’s license. Here’s the card for my PI, David Reynolds. You can call him right now. He’ll tell you who I am. He’ll tell you I’m the guy Ashley has been trying to destroy for a year. I’m on your side, Maria. I just want to make sure no one gets hurt. Especially not the kids.”
She stared at me for a long time, then unhooked the chain, pulling the door open just enough to let me slip inside. The apartment was small, clean, the smell of rice and beans simmering on the stove filling the air. A little girl with pigtails was sitting on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, watching Moana for what looked like the hundredth time. She waved at me shyly, and I waved back.
Maria closed the door, locking all three deadbolts, then leaned against it, letting the bat slide to the floor. “She paid me $5,000,” she said, her voice breaking. “Said if I didn’t sign those papers, Tyler would break my legs. Said he’d take Lila away from me, tell the state I was a bad mom. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m a single mom. I make $14 an hour at the check-cashing place. I can’t fight people like that. I can’t lose my daughter.”
I pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, sitting down across from her. “I know. And I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to help. But I need you to testify that Ashley forced you to sign those papers. I need you to tell the judge exactly what she did. And I need whatever proof you have—texts, voicemails, anything.”
Maria bit her lip, walking over to a loose floorboard by the couch, prying it up with a butter knife. She pulled out a cheap burner phone, handing it to me. “I bought this the day after she paid me. All the texts are on there. Her telling me what to write. Her telling me if I talked to anyone, Tyler would kill Lila. I was going to turn it over to the police next week… but I was scared. Scared they wouldn’t believe me. Scared she’d find out.”
I scrolled through the texts, my blood boiling. There were dozens of them, sent from a blocked number, spelling out every detail of the forgery. Sign the third page at the bottom, not the middle. Make the signature slant to the right, like hers does. If you tell anyone, your daughter ends up in foster care before the sun goes down. This was it. This was the proof we needed to throw Ashley’s entire case out.
“I’m going to make sure you and Lila are safe,” I said, handing the phone back to her. “I’ll put you up in a hotel under a fake name for as long as you need. I’ll hire a bodyguard to stay with you 24/7. I’ll pay for a lawyer for you, whatever you need. All you have to do is tell the truth tomorrow in court. Can you do that, Maria?”
She looked over at her daughter, who was now singing along to How Far I’ll Go, completely unaware of how close she’d come to losing everything. Then she looked back at me, her eyes hard with determination. “Yeah. I can do that. No one threatens my kid and gets away with it. No one.”
I left her apartment an hour later, the burner phone’s contents backed up to three different cloud drives and my own phone, just in case. I called David on the drive back to the shelter, telling him everything we had. He was quiet for a second, then said something that made my blood run cold again.
“Michael, there’s one more thing. While you were talking to Maria, I pulled the meeting logs for Ashley’s lawyers. They had a closed-door meeting with your dad last week. For two hours. At your dad’s country club.”
I froze, my grip on the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. My dad. The man who’d taught me to swing a hammer, who’d given me my first job in construction, who’d refused to speak to me for six months after the divorce because he said I’d “let a good woman get away and ruined the family name.” He’d been on Ashley’s side this whole time? He’d known what she was doing?
“Why?” I whispered. “Why would he help her?”
“I don’t know yet,” David said. “But I’m going to find out. And Michael? You need to be ready for whatever it is. Because if your dad is mixed up in this… it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”
May you like
I hung up, staring out at the dark Georgia highway, the only light coming from my headlights and the distant glow of a Waffle House sign. I’d thought the worst thing I’d ever done was throw Emily out. I’d thought the worst lie Ashley had told was about the affair and the stolen money. But now? Now I was starting to realize that the rot went deeper than I’d ever imagined. All the way to my own family.
And I had less than 24 hours to dig it all up before Ashley took my kids forever.
