I looked down at Kyle’s next line.
And if that happens, Dawson, try not to have a heart attack when you realize a child owns your clubhouse.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, I laughed.
I could not stop myself.
Ray began laughing too.
Then Maggie.
Even Claire covered her eyes and laughed through tears.
Emory looked around at all of us.
I knelt in front of her.
“Your dad left you something pretty big.”
“How big?”
I glanced toward the paperwork.
“About forty thousand square feet.”
She frowned.
“I don’t know how big that is.”
“Most adults don’t either.”
“Is it bigger than our motel room?”
Claire made a sound caught somewhere between crying and laughter.
“Yes, bug.”
Emory thought about it.
“Can we live there?”
Nobody laughed after that.
Because suddenly none of it felt funny.
The little girl who legally owned our clubhouse had just spent eleven nights living in a roadside motel.
The property discovery changed everything.
But it still did not answer the ugliest question.
Where had the money gone? Grant brought us the duplicate ledgers.
Wade got the bank records.
By Monday morning, we had followed seven years of irregular transfers.
At first, they were small.
Eight hundred dollars.
Twelve hundred.
Two thousand.
Later, the amounts grew and were buried inside repair invoices, insurance premiums, event expenses, and family-support payments.
More than four hundred thousand dollars in total.
Someone had been taking money from widows, children, injured riders, and men who trusted their chapter enough that they never thought they needed to count every dollar.
Most of the transfers carried the name Anchor Services.
Not Anchor Holdings.
Similar enough to vanish inside a spreadsheet.
Grant spread the paperwork over the clubhouse table.
“The company was formed three months after Kyle created Anchor Holdings.”
“By who?” I asked.
“The registered agent is fake.”
“What bank?”
“Account was closed eight months ago.”
Wade paced the room.
“Who approved the first transfer?”
Grant looked at him.
“You did.”
Wade stopped moving.
“Your credentials were used.”
“The next one was Dawson.”
I leaned forward.
“After that Leon. Then two were under mine.”
Someone had been rotating through our identities.
Carefully.
Without any obvious pattern.
Mickey said, “That means whoever did this had access to every officer’s credentials.”
Everyone looked toward the old safe.
For years, before digital tokens and two-factor authentication, we had kept emergency account passwords inside a sealed envelope.
In the clubhouse safe.
Historically, only three people at a time knew its combination.
President.
Treasurer.
Secretary.
But the combination changed whenever officers changed.
There had been one man who knew every combination because he was the person who serviced the safe.
An older member named Silas Boone.
Silas had left the chapter eighteen months earlier.
Quietly.
No argument.
No scandal.
He said arthritis had made riding difficult, and he moved to Arkansas.
Ray looked at me.
“Silas.”
The answer fit too neatly.
That bothered me.
We rode to Arkansas.
Silas Boone lived in a little house outside Fayetteville with wind chimes hanging from the porch and three bird feeders in his yard.
He came to the door leaning on a cane.
When he saw the two of us, he sighed.
“Took you long enough.”
Ray and I exchanged a look.
Silas stepped back.
“Come inside.”
A folder was already waiting for us.
I remained standing.
“You know why we came?”
“Kyle.”
“Partly.”
“Money.”
Silas nodded.
“I wondered how long it would take for that to surface.”
Ray’s voice turned hard.
“You steal it?”
Silas laughed.
Then he coughed.
“Ray, I’m seventy-three years old. If I’d stolen four hundred thousand dollars, do you honestly think I’d be eating generic cereal and fighting with Medicare?”
Fair point.
“Then what do you know?”
Silas looked toward me.
“Kyle came here six weeks before he died.”
My chest tightened.
“He thought you were stealing?”
“Then what did he think?”
“That somebody was using my safe records.”
“How?”
Silas moved slowly toward a desk.
“Years ago, I kept maintenance logs.”
He showed me an old notebook.
Whenever the safe combination was changed, Silas recorded the date.
Not the actual numbers.
Next to three of those dates were initials.
G.M.
Grant Mercer.
I stared at the page.
Ray cursed.
Silas shook his head.
“It wasn’t Grant.”
“How do you know?”
“Because those aren’t his initials.”
“Then whose are they?”
Silas looked directly at me.
“Graham Mercer.”
For a moment, I forgot how breathing worked.
Ray said nothing.
Graham had been my older brother.
And one of the founders of the Iron Saints.
He had been d.e.a.d for six years.
Silas sat down.
“He changed those combinations before Grant was ever secretary.”
“Graham never managed accounts.”
“Then why was he getting into the safe?”
Silas looked exhausted.
“Because Graham started Anchor Services.”
The room went silent.
I grabbed the back of a chair.
“My brother stole money from the chapter?”
“He borrowed it.”
“That’s what thieves call stealing when they intend to put it back.”
“Probably.”
“Why did he do it?”
“His business failed. He owed money. He moved chapter funds temporarily, then paid some back. After that he borrowed again.”
Ray spoke.
“How did the theft continue after Graham died?”
Silas turned toward me.
“That was what Kyle wanted to find out.”
“And?”