“You don’t have it.”
“A phone.”
“For what?”
“To call Halden.”
Liam stared at me.
“No.”
“What?”
“You have a concussion.”
“The audit team may be at risk.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know.”
“That answer is exactly why you are not turning this hospital room into an office.”
I pushed myself upward.
Pain tore through my side.
Priya immediately stepped toward me.
“Stop.”
“I have to—”
“No,” she said firmly. “You have to breathe.”
I hated her for approximately three seconds.
Then I obeyed.
She adjusted the bed.
When the pain eased, she looked at me with a patience that felt almost stern.
“You will be much less useful to everyone if you worsen your condition.”
That sounded like something I could understand.
Usefulness.
I nodded.
Liam held out his hand.
“What?”
“The number.”
“To Halden?”
“Yes.”
“You just said—”
“I’ll call.”
“You don’t know what to ask.”
His eyebrow lifted.
“I run an emergency department. I can probably manage the sentence, ‘Please preserve all records and contact law enforcement if you have concerns about immediate safety.’”
Despite myself, I laughed.
The laugh hurt.
It was worth it.
I gave him the number.
He stepped into the hall.
For the first time since waking, I was alone.
Not truly alone.
There were nurses beyond the wall.
Security at the unit entrance.
Priya somewhere nearby.
But no Ethan.
No Liam.
No detective.
Just me.
The silence was enormous.
I looked at my hands.
My wedding ring was gone.
For a panicked moment, I thought Ethan had taken it.
Then I saw a small plastic belongings bag on the counter.
My ring lay inside with a pair of earrings and the thin gold chain I always wore.
I stared at it.
The diamond had belonged to Ethan’s grandmother.
His mother gave it to him when we became engaged.
I remembered how nervous he had seemed the night he proposed.
We were in my father’s backyard.
Dad was still alive then.
Liam had flown in unexpectedly.
There were paper lanterns in the trees and too many bottles of wine on the patio.
Ethan knelt in damp grass.
His hands shook.
Everyone cried.
I did too.
There had been no warning hidden in that moment.
No secret shadow that I had ignored.
That was the part people often misunderstood.
I had not married a man who struck me.
I had married a man who remembered the exact date of my mother’s death because he knew I would be sad before I admitted it.
A man who drove four hours to bring my father his favorite soup during chemotherapy.
A man who once sat on our kitchen floor with me until dawn because I couldn’t stop crying after Dad died.
The first shove came eighteen months later.
By then, those earlier memories had become evidence too.
Evidence for the defense.
See?
He loves me.
See?
This isn’t who he is.
See?
I know him.
I touched the clear bag.
My finger stopped above the ring.
The door opened.
I pulled my hand away.
Liam came in slowly.
Something in his face had changed.
“What happened?”
He shut the door.
“Halden answered.”
“At this hour?”
“They have an after-hours line.”
“I know. Who did you speak to?”
“A man named Aaron Bell.”
My confusion must have shown.
“I don’t know him.”
“He said he’s Halden’s managing director.”
“Claire handles my case.”
“Claire Donnelly?”
“Yes.”
Liam dragged the chair closer.
“Maya, Claire Donnelly hasn’t worked there for three weeks.”
The air seemed to thin.
“What?”
“She resigned.”
“No.”
“That’s what Bell said.”
“She emailed me yesterday.”
Liam went still.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“What address?”
I recited it from memory.
He took out his phone and typed.
Then he looked at me.
“Bell says that’s not a Halden domain.”
I stared at him.
“Of course it is.”
“He says their addresses end in haldenfa.com.”
“I know.”
“The address you gave me ends in halden-advisory.com.”
The difference sat between us.
Small.
Almost laughably small.
A hyphen.
A word.
The kind of difference people missed every day.
The kind of difference I was paid not to miss.
“No,” I whispered.
“Maya.”
“No.”
I could see the emails in my mind.
The logo.
Claire’s signature.
The encryption notice.
The document portal.
My own password manager had autofilled the credentials.
“I spoke to her on the phone.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Was it Claire?”
“Of course it was.”
“Did you see her?”
My mouth went dry.
Not for six weeks.
The audit had begun with in-person meetings at a quiet office downtown.
Claire Donnelly, gray-haired, precise, allergic to vague answers.
Then she had moved our meetings online.
Security, she said.
Too many irregularities.
After that, audio calls only.
Then encrypted email.
“I know her voice,” I said.
Liam’s expression was careful.
“You were dealing with a firm that handles confidential investigations. Would changing an email domain ever be normal?”
“No.”
“Would you miss it?”
The question hurt more than I expected.
“No.”
But I had.
I thought of the night Ethan saw the email.
We have concerns regarding the Northline-linked disbursements and recommend immediate preservation of records.
I had assumed he was reacting to the audit.
What if he had been reacting to something else?
“Give me your phone,” I said.
“Maya—”
“Please.”
He handed it over.
My hands shook as I opened the browser.
I typed the portal address from memory.
The page loaded.
Halden’s blue-and-silver logo appeared.
Client Login.
I knew every pixel of that page.
I had used it for months.
Liam watched me.
“What are you looking for?”
I didn’t answer.
I deleted one word from the web address.
Then the hyphen.
A different site appeared.
Halden Forensic Advisory.
Same logo.
Almost the same page.
Almost.
The spacing was slightly different.
The legal notice at the bottom used a smaller font.
I felt cold.
“No.”
Liam leaned nearer.
“What?”
“The portal.”
“What about it?”
“I’ve been uploading records to the wrong portal.”
For once, my brother had no response.
I stared at the screen.
Six months of bank statements.
Internal authorization logs.
Copies of contracts.
Vendor lists.
Notes.
My questions.
My theories.
Everything I suspected.
Everything I planned to review next.
I had thought I was secretly investigating Ethan.
But someone had been reading over my shoulder the entire time.
Liam took the phone from my hand.
“Maya, listen to me. We call Ruiz. Right now.”
I barely heard him.
The email.
Yesterday’s email.
Preserve records.
The message Ethan saw.
The message that set him off.
Had it been written to warn me?
Or to make sure Ethan discovered the audit?
A thought moved quietly into place.
“Liam.”
He was already reaching for the call button.
“Wait.”
“No.”
“Just wait.”
He looked at me.
I forced myself to slow down.
To separate fear from fact.
“What exactly did Aaron Bell say about Claire?”
“That she resigned three weeks ago.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t discuss personnel matters.”
