The house breathes differently after midnight.
During the day, staff footsteps and distant vacuum hums fill the corridors. At night, the only sounds are the low thrum of the boiler and the soft hiss of the wind climbing the cliffs from the harbor. I stand in the upstairs hallway and listen to it, one hand braced on the cold glass of the window, looking down at Harbor Glen laid out along the narrow peninsula like a necklace of lights.
The hospital on the hill glows blue-white against the sky, sterile and holy and stubbornly clean. Even from up here, I swear I can smell that tang of disinfectant carried on the wind, cutting through the softer scents of woodsmoke and sea salt. The Mercer crest blinks at me from a lit sign outside the Foundation wing, those stylized waves promising rescue.
“You don’t rescue people,” I whisper to the glass. “You rearrange them.”
My breath fogs the pane, blurring the view. When it clears, the estate’s back roads twist away into the trees, the same snow-dusted routes locals use to bypass the manicured town center—the routes Evelyn uses when she wants to move quietly.
I turn away from the window. If Robert won’t stand between his wife and the people she’s hurt, then I need more than fragments and DNA reports. I need the machine’s blueprints.
The home office door is three turns and a staircase away. I walk there on silent feet, the polished wood cool under my thin socks. Every family portrait I pass watches me, all those Mercers in black-and-white, hands folded, eyes confident, crest tucked into frames, the same pattern embossed on donor walls downtown and etched into the glass doors of the country club.
At the office threshold, I pause and listen. No voices, no rustle of paper, no smell of Evelyn’s perfume. Just the faint residual smoke from the fireplace and the lemony bite of the wood polish the staff use on the desk.
“You’re allowed in here,” I remind myself under my breath. “You’re family.”
The word family tastes wrong. I push the door open.
The desk lamp casts a pool of light across the leather blotter and the neatly arranged pens. The rest of the room sinks into shadow: the floor-to-ceiling shelves, the tufted chairs, the heavy curtains framing the window that overlooks the harbor. The fire is out, leaving a faint charcoal smell behind.
My eyes go straight to the cabinet.
It sits behind the desk, waist-high and discreet, a three-drawer unit the color of dark espresso, designed to look like furniture rather than a safe. A small silver lock glints at the top—a tiny, tidy gate for something large enough to reshape lives.
I slide the door shut behind me until it barely clicks. The sound rings too loud in my ears anyway.
“Okay,” I whisper. “You watched seventeen videos. You can do this.”
I pull the bobby pin from my hair, the one I started wearing on purpose after Riley’s lockpicking lecture over cheap takeout. The room feels colder with my hair falling around my face. I straighten the pin, leaving a slight bend at the tip the way the guy on YouTube did, and fish the tension wrench out of my jeans pocket, the small L-shaped piece of metal Riley gave me “just in case Evelyn believes in old-fashioned locks.”
“She believes in every kind,” I murmur.
I kneel in front of the cabinet. The rug presses rough patterns into my bare knees. I slide the tension wrench into the bottom of the keyhole and twist gently to the right, feeling for the give. My fingers shake, not from the effort but from the awareness that on the other side of the wall, my mother-in-law sleeps a few doors down, and this whole wing is wired for discreet motion sensors and cameras.
Riley’s voice in my head says, Check your angles.
I glance up. The camera in this room sits over the doorway, a tiny black dome blending into the molding, pointed toward the desk. The cabinet is in its blind spot; I tested that days ago by pacing the room while watching the security feed reflection in the window. Still, the skin between my shoulder blades prickles.
“In and out,” I tell myself.
I insert the pin and start feeling for pins inside the lock, lifting each until I hear the softest tick. Thunk of my own heartbeat, tick of brass shifting, the quiet rasp of metal on metal. I hold my breath through each tiny movement.
First pin, second, third. The tension wrench bites into the pad of my finger, and I taste copper in my mouth from where I’ve been worrying my lower lip.
“Come on,” I whisper. “You survived their staircase; you can survive a desk drawer.”
The fourth pin clicks, then the fifth, and the cylinder gives under my hand, turning a quarter inch. The sound is barely audible, but it slams through my nerves like a gunshot.
“Thank you, internet,” I breathe.
I pull the drawer open slowly, careful not to let it rattle against the frame. The smell hits me first: paper, toner, that specific dry ink scent of laser-printed reports, mixed with a faint hint of Evelyn’s perfume trapped in the fibers from her hands. Inside, files stand in neat rows, tabs labeled in crisp, precise caps: STAFF – PERMANENT. STAFF – TEMPORARY. GUESTS. BOARD. PERSONAL.
Personal.
My hand moves there automatically, drawn like metal to a magnet.
I ease the PERSONAL section forward. Names jump out: older, heavier stock folders for family, thinner ones for others. DANIEL – MEDICAL/LEGAL. ROBERT – MEDICAL/BOARD. HANNAH COLE-MERCER. The sight of my own name, hyphenated, in Evelyn’s handwriting sends a cold lick up my spine.
“Later,” I tell myself, barely audible. “Stay focused.”
I leave my folder where it is—for now—and slide to the thicker cluster labeled GUESTS. Tabs with last names and neat date ranges. I pull one at random: KLEIN, LUCAS – 2015-2017. A friend of Daniel’s from college, I recall, all blazers and loud laugh.
Inside, a clipped packet contains a background check—financial history, employment verification, social media screenshots. On the next page, a printout of his LinkedIn, highlighted where he left a job at a rival hospital chain. At the back, a single-page summary, headed in bold:
RISK / LEVERAGE PROFILE.
I read aloud under my breath, the words sounding surreal in my own voice.
“Subject: Lucas Klein. Strengths: social influence in young donor demographic. Weaknesses: gambling debt history, brief inpatient stay age twenty-one. Recommendation: maintain proximity via Daniel. Monitor for instability that could reflect on Mercer name; intervene if necessary.”
The language is clinical, like a chart note on a patient who doesn’t know they’ve been admitted.
I flip through more. A retired judge who routinely attends Light the Harbor on a Mercer yacht: notes about quiet reimbursements for his grandchild’s medical bills, a line about his “gratitude bias.” A country club committee chair: “Aspiring to higher status; responsive to flattery re: donor wall placement.”
Each file reads like an anatomy of power, every person reduced to risk factors and pressure points.
My skin crawls, but my fingers keep moving, hungry for more, like I can’t look away from a highway crash.
I reach the section labeled STAFF – KEY. Names I recognize: Claire, the housekeeper; the estate manager; the driver. Each file has a background check. Several include typed notes on temperament, loyalty, “potential for problematic conscience.” Some have attached emails from security firms, others snippets of texts taken out of context.
Claire’s file makes my chest tighten. A flag at the bottom reads: “Soft spot for patients and junior staff; may leak information under emotional strain. Offset by long-term financial dependency; low likelihood of active betrayal.”
“She’s not a risk, you witch,” I whisper, voice shaking. “She’s just decent.”
I snap a photo of that note with my phone, the shutter sound disabled, the faint vibration against my palm the only sign anything happened. I take more, moving fast but methodically: Judge, club chair, staff. Every tile in Evelyn’s private mosaic.
Then I reach a thinner cluster of files separated by a red divider. EX RELATIONSHIPS.
My stomach knots.
Daniel’s past isn’t my business, I tell myself. But Evelyn made it her business, which makes it mine.
“Sorry,” I mutter to the women whose names I don’t recognize.
I slide out the first one. Inside: photos of a woman at a coffee shop in the Harbor Glen town center, laughing with friends, walking alone. A printout of her Instagram, annotated; a notation about her father’s small legal practice three towns over. At the back, the same summary header.
“Subject: Lily Park,” I read quietly. “Strengths: bright, socially conscious, potential PR asset. Concerns: Independently minded; history of advocating for hospital transparency online. Recommendation: discourage long-term entanglement with Daniel Mercer; redirect via career opportunity elsewhere.”
I picture Evelyn, smiling, offering “helpful connections” that are really exit routes.
Folder after folder tells the same story, in different fonts: women evaluated like financial positions, backed up with “informal psychological impressions” from therapists, colleagues, sometimes from Rachel Lang herself. I feel nausea rise in my throat.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Back to the point. You’re not here to inventory exes. You’re here for proof of pattern.”
My eyes scan the tabs for something else. At the very back of the drawer, behind the EX section, three slim folders sit alone, edges new and sharp. Two names I recognize: DONNELLY, MARY – CONTACT HISTORY. COLE, MARIA – MATERNITY UNIT EMPLOYMENT RECORD.
My mother’s name cuts through me like ice.
I reach for it and then stop, fingers hovering.
“Later,” I say. “If you open that now, you’ll never make it to the third file.”
The third folder’s tab is narrower, the letters packed tight but unmistakable.
SHAW, RILEY – THREAT ASSESSMENT.
I slide it out with both hands, carefully, like it could detonate.
The cover is clean, only the name and date. I open it in the band of lamplight, my shadow falling across the first page.
At the top, centered, in all caps:
SUBJECT PROFILE: RILEY MARIE SHAW.
There’s a black-and-white photograph stapled to the corner, printed from a color original copied too many times. Riley stands outside Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital, shoulders hunched against the wind, hair pulled back, a notebook under one arm. A Mercer crest sign looms over her shoulder on the hospital wall, like it’s tagging her.
“Jesus, Riles,” I whisper. “She had eyes on you from the start.”
Below the picture, bullet points march down the page:
– Age: 28
– Current employment: Investigator, Children’s Advocacy Network (regional office)
– Educational background: Social work (B.A.), data analytics certificate
– Personal history: Multiple foster placements; adoptive parents deceased (MVA, age 4).
My throat tightens on that line.
Someone—Evelyn or one of her hired analysts—has underlined “multiple foster placements” twice in red.
The next page is labeled:
INVESTIGATIVE ACTIVITY – TIMELINE.
Dates, locations, notes:
– 10⁄02 – 10⁄07: Subject accessed archived adoption records in county courthouse (see attached CCTV stills).
– 10⁄15: Subject photographed donor wall at Harbor Glen Memorial Foundation lobby.
– 11⁄03: Subject observed at coffee shop on Harbor Glen main street; conversation with known hospital nurse (retired).
A grainy photo shows Riley at the same gossip-thick café where I once sat with the owner, both of them bent over a file. A red circle is drawn around the owner’s face, initials in the margin: “Potential leak source.”
Another photo shows Riley at the docks, the harbor stretched behind her in storm gray, boats bobbing like punctuation. In the background, barely visible, the Mercers’ yacht from Light the Harbor years, its crest-painted hull peeking out from behind another vessel.
“She’s mapped you onto her boat parade,” I murmur. “Her little social census.”
I snap pictures as I go, thumb moving rapidly, phone warm in my hand. Each page reveals more:
– Notes summarizing Riley’s published articles on “paper orphans.”
– A clipped email chain between Evelyn and an executive at the hospital discussing “nuisance requests” for records from a “Ms. Shaw” and strategies to “delay/deflect without triggering legal review.”
– A one-page “psychological impression” from Dr. Lang based only on Riley’s public speaking clips and social media posts.
I read that last part aloud with a bitter edge.
“Subject presents with focused anger, possible unresolved attachment trauma, strong identification with victim narratives. High likelihood of persistence in investigative activity. Motivators: justice framing, personal identity closure, potential financial gain.”
My hand shakes so hard the paper rustles. I flatten it against the desk.
“Financial gain?” I whisper. “You think she wants your money, not her name?”
At the bottom of the page, underlined twice:
RISK LEVEL: HIGH (if aligned with Hannah Cole-Mercer).
RECOMMENDATION: Discredit through association; amplify perception of HCM instability before public allegations emerge.
I swallow bile.
“You’re already writing my diagnosis into her file,” I say.
The last page is the one that freezes me.
It’s titled:
CONTINGENCY PLANS – SUBJECT SHAW / H. COLE-MERCER.
There are no details spelled out, just bullet points with vague labels:
– Phase I: Information gathering (completed).
– Phase II: Narrative shaping (ongoing: see Dr. Lang reports re: HCM).
– Phase III: Legal containment (NDA structures, settlement scenarios).
– Phase IV: Asset removal (if required).
Asset removal.
My stomach drops to my knees.
I snap photo after photo until my storage warning flashes. I delete three blurry duplicates and keep going, heart hammering. I slide Riley’s folder back exactly where I found it, aligning the edges with the files on either side, as if perfect geometry can hide the violation.
My gaze jumps to the other two slim folders: Donnelly, Maria Cole. For a moment, my fingers itch to open them, to rip them apart, to see every way Evelyn has reduced my mother and me to bullet points and contingency plans.
A floorboard creaks out in the hallway.
I jolt, every nerve on fire, and freeze for three long beats, listening. No knob turning, no footsteps drawing closer. Just the deep settling sigh of a hundred-year-old house on its cliff.
“Later,” I tell those other folders under my breath. “You’re not going anywhere. She thinks she has all the time.”
I close the drawer, pushing until it seats with a soft thunk. I reinsert the tension wrench and bobby pin, reverse the cylinder, feeling the pins drop back into place one by one. When I pull the tools free, the lock looks untouched, a small, shining lie under my fingertips.
I stand, knees tingling, and slide the bobby pin back into my hair. My phone feels heavy in my pocket, stuffed with images of how Evelyn sees everyone in her orbit: not as family, not as staff, not as neighbors on a peninsula they all share, but as assets and threats, leverage and liabilities.
“You watch everyone,” I whisper to the dark room. “You grade their loyalty, chart their weaknesses, decide who gets to keep their name.”
The Mercer crest on the paperweight by the lamp catches the light, those abstract waves looking less like water and more like fingerprints pressed over Harbor Glen.
“You’ve been surveilling Riley,” I say quietly, almost to the crest itself. “But now I’ve surveilled you.”
I switch off the lamp and let the room slip back into shadow. The office door opens without a sound when I ease it, and the hallway air hits my face, cooler and cleaner, faintly laced with that distant hospital smell pouring down the hill.
As I pad toward the guest room, every security camera I pass feels hotter on my skin, every portrait another lens. I know Evelyn has anticipated Riley, and me, and probably a dozen moves we haven’t made yet.
The question humming in my bones, louder than the wind, is not whether she’s watching.
It is whether the evidence glowing in my pocket will stay hidden long enough for us to decide how to use it—or whether the woman who runs her own private surveillance state inside this house has already planned a countermeasure for a daughter-in-law who learned to pick locks on YouTube.