laughing with a senator. Inside, cameras were setting up near the podium. Inside, every person who mattered to him would soon be watching.
He believed he had erased me.
He had no idea I had come only to leave something behind.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Take me to Judge Marlow’s chambers.’
The driver’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.
He did not ask why.
As the car pulled away from the curb, the museum lights blurred through the rain like candles seen through tears. I let the city slide past without looking at it. My phone buzzed three times in my lap.
Unknown number.
Then again.
On the fourth buzz, I answered.
A woman breathed into the line.
‘Grace?’
I straightened.
‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Mara from the clinic.’
Mara Finch had been my father’s head nurse for seventeen years. She could calm a screaming toddler, intimidate a specialist, and find a missing lab result faster than anyone alive. The last time I saw her, she stood at Dad’s funeral in a navy dress, gripping my hand so tightly her knuckles went white.
‘Mara, are you all right?’
‘Did you give him the case?’
My breath caught. ‘How do you know about the case?’
Silence.
Then, softly, ‘Your father told me there might be one.’
I stared at the rain crawling down the window.
‘What else did he tell you?’
‘Not enough. He was afraid of the phone. Afraid of email. He said if Adrian held a gala before the audit was released, the case had to reach the stage.’
The word audit moved through me like cold water.
‘What audit?’
Mara’s voice dropped. ‘Grace, listen to me. The clinic accounts weren’t just drained. Patient records were altered. Some of the missing money was hidden under treatment grants that never reached patients.’
I closed my eyes.
I had suspected theft. I had suspected forgery. But patient records meant something worse. It meant lives had been turned into cover stories.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked.
‘Because I didn’t know who to trust. And because your mother came to see me yesterday.’
My eyes opened.
My mother, Evelyn Holloway, had not spoken to me since the funeral except through attorneys. She had always adored Adrian with a loyalty that felt less like love and more like investment. He was the son who looked right in photographs, the son who gave speeches, the son who made rich people feel generous. I was the daughter who asked where the money went.
‘What did she want?’
‘She asked whether your father had left anything outside the house. Then she told me people with fragile reputations should not dig near graves.’
The car turned toward the courthouse district.
‘Mara,’ I said, ‘where are you?’
Another pause.
‘In my car outside the clinic. The locks were changed tonight.’
I sat forward. ‘Adrian fired you?’
‘Not officially. They just made sure my key stopped working.’
Her voice cracked for the first time.
‘Grace, your father kept a red ledger in the old medicine cabinet. It disappeared after he died. If that case has what I think it has, Adrian will try to destroy every remaining record before morning.’
The courthouse appeared ahead, pale stone rising out of the rain.
‘Go somewhere public,’ I said. ‘Do not
