"The doctor gave my six-year-old twins ten days to live, but that afternoon a penniless woman appeared at my gates claiming she knew how to save them—and she knew a secret about their mother that no one should have known.

I read the letter three times standing at the window.

Then I folded it and set it face-down on the desk.

Nora watched me.

She didn't speak.

"How much do you know about Crosby Vane?" I asked.

"Only what Genevieve told me.

That he was your business partner before you dissolved the partnership.

That he blamed you for it.

And that he had been watching your family for a long time before Genevieve d*ed."

"Genevieve never mentioned him to me.

Not once."

"She was protecting you." Nora's voice was careful.

"She thought if you knew he'd approached her, you would go after him directly.

She was afraid of what that would start."

"She was right to be afraid." I picked up my phone.

"What she was wrong about was thinking she could handle it alone."

I called Prescott.

He answered on the first ring.

"The Vane sighting this morning," I said.

"How many men?"

"Two vehicles.

They didn't approach the fence.

Just drove the perimeter road twice and left."

"Pull every camera record from the last six months.

I want to know every time those vehicles appeared within half a mile of this property."

A pause.

"Lawson, that's going to take—"

"Tonight, Prescott."

I ended the call.

Nora was watching me with an expression I couldn't fully read.

Not fear.

Something closer to relief, like a person who had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had finally set it down in the right place.

"The letter mentions documents," I said.

"Genevieve said she found proof.

Do you have them?"

"No.

She said she'd hidden them somewhere safe.

She didn't tell me where.

She said the less I knew, the safer I'd be."

"She was protecting you too."

"Yes." Nora's voice was barely above a whisper.

"That was Genevieve.

Always protecting everyone except herself."

I sat down.

For a moment neither of us spoke.

Then I asked the question I'd been circling since she walked in.

"The children's illness.

You said it was introduced.

What does that mean exactly?

What are we dealing with?"

Nora opened her coat again and removed a folded piece of paper.

She smoothed it on the desk.

It was a handwritten list of compounds.

Dosages.

Intervals.

"I was a nurse for thirty-one years," she said.

"When Genevieve described the twins' symptoms to me — the fatigue, the bl00d counts, the way the illness progressed in waves — I recognized the pattern.

It isn't leukemia.

It's a chronic poisoning.

Slow enough to look like disease.

Specific enough to fool a standard diagnostic panel."

The room tilted.

"Dr.

Yates ran the standard panel."

"Yes."

"And found nothing unusual."

"Because he knew exactly what to look for and chose not to look for it."

I stood up so fast the chair rolled back and hit the wall.

"You're telling me Yates is involved."

"I'm telling you the symptoms match a poisoning profile that would only be missed by someone who already knew what was causing them." She met my eyes steadily.

"You can draw your own conclusion."

I was already reaching for my phone again.

"Don't call Yates," Nora said sharply.

"If he knows you're suspicious, the children's treatment changes overnight.

Whatever he's been giving them — or not giving them — changes.

We lose our only advantage."

My hand stopped.

She was right.

I hated that she was right.

"Then what do I do?"

"You get an independent physician in here tonight.

Someone Vane has no connection to.