"The location the unknown caller sent was a parking garage on the east side of the city — the kind that was half-empty on weekday evenings, all concrete pillars and bad lighting and the smell of old oil.
Elara arrived seven minutes early. She sat in her car on level three with the engine off and the doors locked and the small canister of pepper spray she'd bought two years ago sitting in the cupholder where she could reach it in under a second.
She was not afraid. She was furious, which was better.
A tap on the passenger window at exactly eight o'clock.
She looked.
A man she'd never seen. Mid-forties, unremarkable face, the kind of person you'd pass in a corridor and forget immediately. He held up both hands — empty — and mouthed, *I'm alone.*
She unlocked the passenger door.
He got in. He didn't extend a hand. He said, "My name is Paul Garrett. I'm a private investigator. I was hired fourteen months ago by someone inside Reid Enterprises to document the relationship between Marcus Webb and Victoria Ashford." He looked at her directly. "What I found goes significantly beyond what I was hired to find."
"Who hired you?" Elara asked.
"I can't tell you that yet. What I can tell you is that the drive Diana gave you contains financial records. Wire transfers. Eleven of them, spanning eight months before the accident. From a shell company I've traced back to Victoria Ashford, to an account registered to a man named Deon Carter." He paused. "Deon Carter is currently serving three years for aggravated assault in a case unrelated to this one. He was, before his arrest, available for hire."
Elara processed this without expression.
"The car," she said.
"Rented under a false identity. Deon Carter's specialty." Garrett's voice was matter-of-fact. "Victoria paid him to frighten your husband. The intention, as best I can reconstruct it, was not to kill him — just to injure him badly enough to create a window. A window she could step into." He paused. "The severity of his head injury was not part of the plan. But once it happened, she adapted."
The garage hummed around them.
"You've had this for fourteen months," Elara said. "Why are you coming to me now?"
"Because the person who hired me has disappeared. Three weeks ago. No contact, no explanation." He looked at her steadily. "And because I've watched what's happened to you, Ms. Voss. And because keeping this information locked in a filing cabinet is starting to feel like a crime of my own."
Elara looked at the drive in her palm.
"What do you need from me?" she asked.
"A decision," Garrett said. "Because the moment you move on this, Victoria will know. And she will not be passive about it."
— ✶ —
She drove home at ten p.m. and sat at her kitchen table with the drive, a laptop, and a glass of water she didn't drink.
She opened the files.
Garrett was right. Eleven transfers. Clean, careful, routed through three layers of shell companies — but not clean enough. Not for someone who knew what to look for.
There was something else on the drive.
A single audio file. Forty-three seconds long. No label.
She put her headphones in.
She pressed play.
Victoria's voice filled her ears. Calm. Precise. Exactly as it always was.
"—it needs to happen before the anniversary. He's already pulling away from me and if he renews those vows I lose everything I've built toward. So yes. I'm authorizing it. Make it look like road rage. Make sure she's there — I want her to see it. I want the last thing Callum Reid knows before he loses his memory of her to be her face watching him go down."
A man's voice. Muffled. "And if it's worse than that?"
Victoria, without hesitation: "Then we adapt."
The file ended.
Elara sat in the silence of her kitchen for a long time.
Then she took out her phone and called the one person she hadn't wanted to involve.
She called Callum.
The phone rang four times. Then his voice — cold, confused, slightly wary.
"Elara? It's past ten. Why are you—"
"I need you to come alone," she said. "Don't tell Victoria. Don't tell anyone. I need you to come now."
A beat.
"What's happened?"
"Everything," she said. "I'll explain everything."