Chapter 6: The Document
I did not meet Patrick that night.
I called Reese instead, read him the text verbatim, and listened to the silence on the other end of the line that told me more than his words did.
"He has it," Reese said finally.
"You knew about the document."
"We knew a document of that type likely existed.
We hadn't located it in the materials you provided.
If Hale has the original—" A pause.
"Mrs.
Vance, I need you to understand something.
Patrick Hale is not trying to help you.
He is trying to control what you know and when you know it.
If he hands you that document directly, outside of legal channels, it complicates its use as evidence."
"He knows that."
"Yes.
He knows that."
I was sitting at the small kitchen table in my new apartment, the one I had rented under my maiden name, with a cup of tea I had made and not drunk.
The walls were bare.
The overhead light was too bright.
Through the window I could see the parking lot and a single tree that had lost most of its leaves.
"What do I do?" I asked.
"Tell him you'll meet him.
Give me a time and location.
We'll be there."
"You want to use me."
"I want to recover the document through proper channels so it can be used in both the federal case and your divorce proceedings.
You meeting him is the fastest way to do that."
I looked at the tea.
"And if he doesn't bring it?
If this is just a way to get me alone and find out what I know?"
"Then we learn what he's willing to do to protect himself.
That's also useful."
I thought about the last time I had seen Patrick in person.
The birthday dinner.
The way he had refilled my wine glass without being asked, the way he had told a story about a fishing trip that made David laugh until he cried, the way he had hugged me at the door when they left and said *you two are the best thing I know.*
I had believed him.
"Fine," I said.
"Set it up."
---
We met the following evening at a restaurant in the West Loop — Patrick's suggestion, which Reese had approved because the layout gave his team clean sight lines.
I arrived first and sat facing the door.
Patrick walked in looking like a man who had not slept.
His jacket was slightly wrong, the collar of his shirt uneven.
He scanned the room before he sat down, a habit I had never noticed in him before.
"Thank you for coming," he said.
"You said you had a document."
He looked at me for a moment.
"How are you, Maya?"
"Patrick."
He reached into his jacket and placed a folded envelope on the table between us.
He didn't push it toward me.
Just set it there.
"It's a letter," he said.
"David wrote it two years ago.
I think he wrote it as insurance — something he could use against me if the arrangement ever went wrong.
He gave me a copy to hold.
I think he forgot he gave it to me, or he thought I'd destroyed it."
"What does it say?"
"It says the trust was his idea.
His construction.
That you knew nothing." He looked at the envelope.
"It says I helped him set it up.
It says the Cayman routing was my contact, not his."
I looked at the envelope.
"Why are you giving this to me?"
"Because David threw me under the bus the moment Reese's team showed him the USB files.
His attorney — not the one who declined, the second one — called my attorney this morning.
David is offering to give them everything on me in exchange for a reduced charge." Patrick's jaw tightened.
"Nine years.
Nine years and he handed me over in twelve hours."
"So this is about protecting yourself."
"This is about making sure the truth is on record." He finally pushed the envelope toward me.
"The trust was David's.
You were never part of it.
That letter says so in his own handwriting."
I put my hand on the envelope.
"Patrick," I said.
"Did you know about Lily?"
He went very still.
"David told you she had passed," I said.
"Before I did.
I know because of the way you said her name in your voicemail.
*She was a beautiful child.* Past tense.
Certain.
You already knew."
His eyes dropped to the table.
"He called me from the yacht," Patrick said quietly.
"The morning after.
He said — he said he needed to tell someone.
He was upset.
I think he was genuinely upset."
"But he didn't call me back."
"No."
"He was upset enough to call you.
Not upset enough to answer fifty-one calls from his daughter's mother."
Patrick didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say.
I picked up the envelope.
Under the table, my thumb found the small device Reese had given me that morning — no larger than a coat button, already transmitting.
"I'm going to give this to my attorney," I said.
"And to Agent Reese."
Patrick nodded slowly.
"I know."
"Is there anything else I should know?
Anything in those forty-seven files I haven't found yet?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"There's a name," he said.
"In the Cayman account's beneficiary designation.
A secondary beneficiary, added eighteen months ago." He looked up at me.
"It's not yours."
The restaurant noise continued around us.
Glasses, voices, the scrape of a chair.
"Whose name is it?" I asked.
May you like
Patrick looked at me with something that might have been pity, or might have been relief that he was no longer the one holding this.
"Julianne's," he said.
