"Don't try to open the door, Rosalind.

Tobias drove.

I sat in the passenger seat with Clare's instructions written on a small piece of paper: what to photograph, what to collect, how to handle anything I found without compromising it as evidence.

She had given us two pairs of thin latex gloves from a box in her desk drawer and a clean glass collection vial with a sealed lid.

The house was dark when we arrived.

It was a large colonial on the north side of the city, set back from the road behind a line of oak trees.

Garrett had chosen it.

He had presented it to me six months into our marriage as a surprise — the deed already signed, the keys already cut.

I had been moved by the gesture.

I understood now that he had chosen it because it was isolated.

Tobias parked two streets away.

We walked the rest.

The side gate had a code I still knew.

The back door had a key I still carried.

Inside, the house was exactly as I had left it that morning.

My coffee cup was still in the drying rack.

My reading glasses were on the kitchen counter.

The small framed photograph of my parents was on the shelf above the fireplace, exactly where I had placed it on the day we moved in.

Garrett had never asked me to move it.

I had thought that meant he respected my grief.

I pulled on the gloves and moved to the kitchen.

The compound, according to Tobias's analysis, was likely stored as a powder or a concentrated liquid.

It needed to be kept away from heat.

Garrett had always been particular about one cabinet — the tall one beside the refrigerator, the one he kept locked with a small key he wore on his personal keyring.

I had asked about it once, early in the marriage.

*Medical supplies,* he had said.

*Some things from when I traveled for work.

Nothing interesting.*

I had never asked again.

The lock was a simple lever mechanism.

Clare had anticipated this and included a small tension tool in the kit Tobias had assembled.

It took me four minutes.

My hands were steadier than I expected.

The cabinet opened.

On the top shelf, behind a row of ordinary vitamin bottles, was a small dark glass container with a handwritten label.

The label used a chemical notation I didn't recognize.

Beside it was a folded piece of paper.

I photographed everything before I touched it.

Then I unfolded the paper.

It was a dosage schedule.

My name was at the top.

Below it, a table: dates going back twenty-six months, quantities, and in the right-hand column, a series of initials.

*P.H.*

Penelope Hartwell.

Her maiden name.

She hadn't just sourced the compound.

She had been tracking the dosage.

She had been involved in every administration for over two years.

I stood in my own kitchen, in my own house, holding a piece of paper that documented how my half sister had helped my husband slowly destroy my liver, and I felt something settle in me — not calm exactly, but something harder than anger.

Something that had a direction.

I collected the vial sample, sealed it, and placed it in the kit bag.

I was reaching for the dosage schedule when I heard the front door.

I went completely still.

Footsteps in the entrance hall.

One set.

Moving toward the kitchen.

I pressed myself against the cabinet and looked toward Tobias, who had come in behind me.

He was already against the wall beside the doorway, the kit bag in his hand.

The footsteps stopped just outside the kitchen.

Then a voice.

Not Garrett's.

"Rosalind?"

I knew that voice.

I stepped into the doorway.

Standing in the entrance to the kitchen, coat still on, face pale with something that looked like genuine fear, was Nora.

My assistant.

My most trusted employee.

The woman who had worked beside me at the shipyard for nine years.

"How did you know I was here?" I said.

Her eyes went to my gloved hands.

To the kit bag in Tobias's grip.

To the open cabinet behind me.

"I came to warn you," she said.

Her voice was unsteady.

"Garrett called me an hour ago.

He told me there had been an accident.

He told me you and Tobias had d!ed." She stopped.

"But he called me, Rosalind.

Not the police.

Not your lawyer.

Me." She swallowed.

"He told me to come to the house first thing tomorrow and remove a cabinet in the kitchen before the estate process began."

The cabinet behind me.

"He trusted you with that," I said carefully.

"He thought he could." Her eyes filled.

"I've known for four months that something was wrong.

I didn't know what.

I didn't know how bad." She looked at the open cabinet, at the dark glass container I had already photographed.

"I came tonight because I needed to know if you were alive.

And because if you were—" She stopped again.

"I have something you need to see."

She reached into her coat pocket and placed a USB drive on the kitchen counter.

"Garrett has been using the shipyard's financial accounts as collateral for the transfer," she said.

"I have three years of transaction records on that drive.

Transactions that were never authorized by you.

Transactions that were routed through a shell company registered to Harlan Voss." She looked at me steadily.

"I copied them six weeks ago.

I didn't know what to do with them.

I was afraid."

Tobias picked up the drive.

I looked at Nora — her coat, her pale face, the way she was holding herself like someone who had made a decision and was still absorbing the weight of it.

"Why are you afraid?" I asked.