Chapter 7: Patricia Hale
I stared at the message.
Unknown number.
No name.
The timestamp read 11:47 PM.
Daniel leaned over and read it.
His hand tightened around mine.
"Who has your number?" he asked.
"Everyone at this wedding.
It's been on the invitation envelope for six months." I looked up.
"Including your father."
"My father doesn't send anonymous texts.
That's not how he operates."
"Then who?"
I looked around the room.
Most guests were still at tables or on the dance floor.
Gerald was talking to my uncle Raymond, gesturing with his champagne glass.
Nothing in his posture suggested he had just sent anything.
My father still hadn't come back.
I stood up.
"I'm going to find him."
I found my father outside on the venue's side terrace, phone to his ear, pacing a slow rectangle between two potted hedges.
He held up one finger when he saw me — one minute — and kept talking.
I waited.
When he ended the call, he turned to me with an expression I hadn't seen on him since the week my mother was in the hospital.
Not panic.
Something more controlled than panic, and more frightening for it.
"Patricia answered," he said.
"Good."
"She already knows about Whitmore.
She's known for two weeks." He paused.
"She's been trying to reach me because she found something in the original partnership agreement — a clause that Gerald's lawyers inserted in a 2019 amendment.
It limits my ability to challenge asset transfers if I miss a sixty-day notification window."
"Did you miss it?"
"The window opened the day your mother's death anniversary fell.
I was in no state to be reading contract amendments." His voice was level.
"Gerald knew that.
The timing wasn't accidental."
I showed him the text.
He read it twice.
"Patricia says she's clean," he said.
"She found the clause and flagged it, which is why she's been calling.
If she wanted to bury this, she'd have said nothing."
"Someone doesn't want you talking to her."
"Someone knows we're talking to her right now." He looked through the glass doors into the ballroom.
"Someone at this wedding."
I thought about Gerald's table.
His phone.
The Whitmore thread.
Fourteen messages and one sent two days ago.
"Whitmore," I said.
"What if Whitmore is here tonight?"
My father frowned.
"Why would—"
"Gerald needed a witness for the transfers.
Someone to sign off on the restructuring from the outside.
Someone whose name wouldn't immediately connect back to him." I looked at the room.
"Who came tonight that you don't know well?
Someone on Gerald's side of the guest list."
My father thought.
"Gerald brought two guests.
His wife, obviously.
And a colleague he introduced as a business contact.
Older man.
Gray suit.
I didn't catch the name."
"Where is he sitting?"
We looked through the glass together.
At Gerald's table: Gerald, his wife, my uncle Raymond, two cousins, and one empty chair.
"He's not there," I said.
"No."
We both looked toward the corridor that led to the bathrooms, the side lounge, and the venue's back office.
"Patricia," I said.
"Is she coming here tonight?"
"She offered.
I told her to wait until I called back."
"Call her back.
Tell her to come." I put my hand on the door.
"And Dad — don't go back to your table yet.
Stay out here."
"Olivia—"
"Gerald is watching you.
Every time you move, he's tracking it.
Stay here, stay on the phone with Patricia, and let me handle the next ten minutes."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
I went back inside.
Daniel was still at our table.
He had turned his chair slightly so he could see both the main entrance and Gerald's table.
He looked up when I sat down.
"The gray-suited man at Gerald's table," I said.
"Where did he go?"
"He left about five minutes after your father went outside.
Walked toward the back corridor."
"Has he come back?"
"No."
I picked up my phone and typed a message to the unknown number: *Who are you?*
Three dots appeared immediately.
Then stopped.
Then appeared again.
The reply came: *Someone who signed something I shouldn't have.
Gerald told me it was routine.
I didn't read it carefully enough.*
I looked up at Daniel.
"It's Whitmore," I said.
May you like
"He's here.
And I think he wants out."
