Chapter 5: The Woman Who Came Before
Claire Maddox arrived at the hospital the next morning carrying two coffees and the particular composure of someone who had learned, through necessity, to keep their hands steady.
She was forty-three.
Dark hair cut short.
A small scar above her left eyebrow that she didn't try to hide.
She set one coffee on the bedside table and kept the other and looked at Nora with the direct, assessing gaze of a woman who needed to know quickly whether the person in front of her was going to hold.
"You look better than I expected," Claire said.
"You look like you've been through it," Nora said.
Claire almost smiled.
"That's fair." She sat down.
"Your father told me what you said about Whitmore."
"Grace told you?"
"Grace told your father.
Your father told me." She wrapped both hands around her coffee.
"I've heard that name before.
Once.
Two years after my case was closed.
A woman I used to work with — she was going through a divorce, messy, the husband had money — she mentioned that her husband's attorneys had brought in a consulting firm to handle what she called 'the complicated parts.' She said the firm's name was Whitmore."
Nora sat up slightly.
"Did she tell you what the complicated parts were?"
"She didn't know.
She said by the time the case was over she had signed away more than she'd intended to and she wasn't entirely sure how it had happened." Claire paused.
"She's not the kind of person who gets confused about contracts.
She's a surgeon."
"Do you think she'd talk to Grace?"
"I already called her this morning.
She'll talk." Claire looked at her steadily.
"I want you to understand something.
I spent three years trying to get someone to take this seriously.
Three years of being told I was exaggerating, or that I was bitter, or that the Hargrove family simply had better lawyers than I did." Her voice didn't waver, but something behind her eyes did.
"When your father called me, I didn't believe him at first.
I thought it was another dead end."
"What changed your mind?"
"He sent me the recording from the gala." Claire set her coffee down.
"The one from your cuff."
Nora hadn't known her father had shared that.
She filed it away.
"I heard Callum's voice," Claire said.
"And I heard the way the room reacted.
And I thought — she actually did it.
She actually got them all in one place and she made them show themselves." She looked at Nora with something that was not quite admiration and not quite grief but lived in the space between them.
"I couldn't have done that.
I wasn't strong enough, at that point.
I want you to know that what you did took something I didn't have."
"You had enough to survive," Nora said.
"That's not nothing."
Claire was quiet for a moment.
"How's your daughter?" Nora asked.
"She's nine now.
I have her every other week." A pause.
"It's not what I wanted.
But it's more than they tried to leave me with." She picked up her coffee again.
"I'm going to get it changed.
After this, with the ruling under review — Grace thinks the original custody order can be challenged."
"It will be," Nora said.
"I'll make sure of it."
Claire looked at her.
"You don't have to do that."
"I know," Nora said.
"That's why I'm doing it."
The door opened.
Nora's father stepped in, and behind him, a nurse.
"They want to do another check," her father said.
"Claire, they need a few minutes."
Claire stood.
She picked up her jacket.
At the door she paused and turned back.
"Callum's attorney filed a motion this morning," she said.
"To have the recordings declared inadmissible.
He's arguing entrapment."
Nora felt the shift in the room — her father's stillness, the slight tension in Claire's jaw.
"Can he do that?" Nora asked.
"Grace says no.
But it means he's fighting." Claire's eyes met hers.
"He's not going to make this easy."
"He never has," Nora said.
Claire nodded once.
Then she left.
The nurse moved to the monitors.
Nora's father came to stand beside the bed.
He didn't say anything.
But Nora could see it in the set of his shoulders — the thing he hadn't said yet, the thing he was deciding whether to tell her.
"What is it?" she said.
He looked at the nurse.
The nurse finished her check and stepped out.
"Callum's attorney isn't just filing motions," her father said.
"He made contact with Daniel Reeves last night."
Nora went still.
"What kind of contact?"
"A message.
Through an intermediary.
Offering Daniel a significant sum to recant his statement and return the hard drive." He paused.
"Daniel called Grace immediately.
She has the message."
"So they're trying to buy their way out again."
"Yes." Her father looked at her.
"But that's not the part that concerns me."
"Then what is?"
May you like
"The intermediary they used," he said.
"It was someone inside Grace's office."
