LOGINShe did not call ahead.That was deliberate. If she called ahead the appointment would be cancelled or rescheduled or there would be a message from a receptionist explaining that Dr. Weiss was unavailable for the foreseeable future and perhaps Grace would like a referral. She had learned enough about how these people operated to know that forewarning was the same as forearming.So she drove to the clinic at seven-fifteen in the morning, which was forty-five minutes before the front desk opened and an hour before the first appointment of the day. She parked across the street and she waited with a coffee from the place on the corner and she watched the building.At seven fifty-two a car pulled into the small lot beside the clinic. Dr. Weiss. Grace recognised her from the one session photo on the clinic website — mid-fifties, dark coat, the kind of composed and unhurried bearing that was either genuine or very well practised.Grace got out of her car.She crossed the street and reached t
Aiden thought about it for a long time before he answered.That was not evasion. That was the way Aiden engaged with questions that mattered — he did not fill the space with the first thing that came to him. He went looking for the accurate thing, which sometimes took longer than the easy thing.Grace waited. She kept her hands still on the table and looked at the calendar on the laptop screen and waited."It was Mason," Aiden said finally.Grace looked at him."Before your wedding," Aiden continued. "You were looking for a solicitor. I remember you mentioning it at a family dinner — you said you wanted your own representation for some of the property paperwork, independent of the Hartwell family lawyers. Mason said he knew someone. He gave you Rachel's name." He paused. "I remember because I thought it was unusually considerate of him at the time."Grace looked back at the calendar.Mason had given her Rachel.Mason, who planned everything in advance and left nothing to chance, who h
Torres confirmed it the next morning.David Marsh had been on Mason's payroll throughout his employment at the firm — not the firm's payroll, Mason's personal one. A separate arrangement, a separate account, structured carefully enough to survive a casual audit. Torres had found it in forty minutes, which told Grace it had never been particularly well hidden. It had only needed to be hidden from people who were not looking.Emma had not been looking. She had been hoping.Grace sat across from Torres in the field office and listened to him lay out the full picture and thought about the difference between those two things. Between looking and hoping. She had spent seven years of her marriage hoping — that Mason was simply stressed, simply distracted, simply not quite as warm as she needed but trying. She understood exactly how hope could function as a blindfold."Marsh is being brought in this afternoon," Torres said. "He will give us Mason's communication channels — the phone, the inte
Grace did not tell Emma about the surveillance footage.Not yet. She needed Emma steady and present and she needed to think clearly, and the footage — which Torres had called about that same afternoon, two hours after Emma's confession — had the potential to unsteady all three of them if she introduced it at the wrong moment.So she waited.She sat in the kitchen that evening while Emma and Aiden talked in the living room, the television on low in the background, and she turned the information over in her mind the way she turned fabric samples when she was trying to find a seam. Looking for where the thing had been joined. Where the join might give.Torres had pulled surveillance records from three locations. He had cross-referenced the dates on which Mason seemed to have known things he should not have — Grace's plans, her movements, the specific details that kept appearing in Mason's responses as if he had been in the room when she said them.On three of those dates, Emma had been a
Grace called Rachel back before she had finished reading the text."What happened?" she said."Emma hasn't answered her phone since last night," Rachel said. Her voice was measured but Grace knew Rachel's measured voice well enough by now to hear the effort underneath it. "I called her at midnight when you were at Tessa Designs and she didn't pick up. I called her this morning three times. Nothing. I went to her flat an hour ago and she wasn't there.""Could she be with someone? Could she have—""I called Daniel. I called her sister. I called the coffee place she goes to every morning because Emma is a creature of habit and she has been ordering the same thing from the same place every day for two years." A pause. "She wasn't there."Grace was already moving down the corridor toward Aiden. She held up a hand and he straightened immediately."Has she been in contact with you at all? Any message, any—""Nothing since yesterday evening," Rachel said. "She sent me a voice note at eight PM
Jennifer arrived at the FBI field office at nine in the morning looking like someone who had not slept and had spent the hours she should have been sleeping convincing herself that coming in was the right thing to do.Grace was already there. She had been there since eight, in the same clothes as the night before, running on coffee and the particular clarity that arrived on the other side of exhaustion when your body gave up fighting and simply got on with things.Torres brought Jennifer into the small interview room and Grace sat across from her and looked at her properly. Jennifer had been her assistant for four years. She had stayed when the business accounts were frozen and the clients were cancelling and the media was printing things about Grace that were designed to make her look unstable. She had stayed through all of it without being asked to.Grace looked at her now and thought about that. About what it meant that the credit card was in her name. About the device in the offic
Sophia woke up in pain. Sharp, stabbing pain in her stomach.She sat up fast. Felt wetness between her legs.Blood."No. No no no."She threw off the covers. The sheets were soaked. Red. So much red."Mason!" she screamed. "MASON!"He wasn't there. She was alone in the cabin.Sophia tried to stand.
Grace and Aiden spent the next day trying to salvage what they could. Calling people. Gathering replacement documents. Planning their next move.They were in Aiden's cabin. The resort had moved them after the fire.Grace was on her phone. Texting Rachel about setting up a press conference.Then her
The next morning, Grace went to the resort spa. She needed to clear her head. Think about her next move.She was in the sauna. Alone. Eyes closed. Breathing in the steam.The door opened.Grace opened her eyes.Sophia stood there. Wearing a white robe. Her face hard."We need to talk," Sophia said.
Grace was reading on the couch when there was a knock on the door. Aiden opened it.A man stood there. Tall and expensive suit. Perfect smile."Aiden! There you are!" The man walked in without being invited. "I've been looking everywhere for you.""Derek. What are you doing here?""Business, my fri







