Riley’s office smells like instant ramen and printer toner when I step back inside.
The radiator ticks in the corner, losing the battle against the Harbor Glen winter that presses at the old windowpanes. Streetlight bleeds through the blinds in thin gold stripes, mixing with the blue glow from two open laptops. Outside, Main Street is quiet, just a couple of cars sliding past the bakery and the coffee shop where half the town’s gossip was born.
Riley has already colonized the table in the middle of the room. Laptops, manila folders, printed emails, highlighters, the DNA reports, even a printout of the trust document—everything is spread over the scarred wood like organs on a metal tray. The paper orphans map covers the wall behind her, threads pulling Harbor Glen’s peninsula into a web.
Daniel stands near the window, hands in his pockets, staring down at the harbor lights. From here I can just make out the Mercer Foundation wing glowing on the hill, glass and chrome catching the water’s reflection. The town curves around it like a body around a heartbeat, salt and woodsmoke and that faint tang of hospital disinfectant drifting up when the wind shifts.
“Well?” Riley asks without preamble. “Queen Regent try to buy you out?”
I close the door against the hallway’s draft and shrug out of my coat.
“She brought an envelope,” I say. “And a script. Divorce, NDA, generous settlement, everyone saved except the people they buried.”
Daniel flinches at the word divorce. His reflection jumps in the window, then steadies.
Riley snorts, but the sound has no humor in it.
“So she’s worried,” she says. “Good. That buys us maybe thirty-six hours before she escalates.”
I pull my phone out and place it on the table, screen-up for a moment so they can read the file name: Triaged Souls. Then I turn it facedown again, letting the weight of it sit there between us.
“You recorded her,” Daniel says. His voice lands somewhere between accusation and awe.
“One-party consent,” I say. “Your mother knows that. She’ll hate that I remembered.”
Riley’s eyes sharpen.
“Did she mention me?” she asks. “Or my ‘instability’?”
“She said there are inquiries into your methods,” I answer. “Data privacy, harassment. That she can encourage certain parties to stand down if I walk away.”
Riley exhales through her nose, sharp.
“Right on schedule,” she says. “Lawyers first, then character assassination, then threats dressed up as concern.”
I cross the room and stand opposite her, the table between us like a jury box. Daniel finally peels himself away from the window and joins us, resting his knuckles on the wood. The three of us form a triangle around the chaos of paper and light.
My pulse beats in my throat. This is where the next move starts or dies.
“We have one advantage,” Riley says, tapping the laptop nearest her. “The gala.”
On the screen, a Mercer Foundation landing page glows: a banner photo of the Light the Harbor boat parade, yachts wrapped in fairy lights, the Mercer crest printed on banners in that abstract wave pattern. A caption in tasteful navy font reads: An Evening of Healing and Hope.
“They invited local media, donors, statewide outlets,” she continues. “There’s already a press list for the program Evelyn is headlining. Cameras will be there, phones will be ready, influencers will be fishing for content. They built themselves a stage; we’d be idiots not to use it.”
Daniel rubs a thumb over a coffee stain on the table.
“You make it sound like some kind of heist,” he says.
Riley raises an eyebrow.
“You grew up in a town where social status is literally ranked by which yacht you ride during Light the Harbor,” she says. “You know better than anyone that appearances are currency here. We’re going to counterfeit their narrative and swap it in at the point of maximum circulation.”
The metaphor makes my stomach tighten, but something in me straightens too. Strategic, not reactive. Surgical, like we promised when I first saw the map.
“Walk us through it,” I say. “Step by step.”
Riley nods, flicks to another tab. An email thread fills the screen, subject line: Re: Off the record? Her cursor hovers over a name I recognize from national investigations into hospital billing scandals.
“I’ve got a journalist,” she says. “She’s not local, which helps. Less likely to be on the country club waitlist. We’ve been circling each other for months. I send her tips; she verifies everything before she touches it. That’s crucial. No fire without receipts.”
“What do you want to give her?” I ask.
Riley starts sorting documents into piles with quick, precise movements.
“We build a packet,” she says. “Not the whole map—that stays here. But enough: the DNA results, the second daughter trust, the police report from Lydia’s accident, the adoption files I scraped before they torched the rest, Mrs. Donnelly’s partial paperwork, your mother’s employment records, the pattern of sealed birth certificates tied to the Mercer Foundation’s ‘special cases.’”
She pauses, then adds my phone to a new pile with two fingers.
“And this,” she says. “A cleaned-up transcript of Evelyn offering to trade you and me for quiet. Plus a short audio clip, if my friend’s lawyers say it’s safe.”
Daniel’s jaw clenches.
“You’re going to broadcast my mother’s voice,” he says.
Riley looks up at him.
“Your mother already broadcast herself,” she says. “The foundation has her speeches on YouTube, Daniel. I’m just introducing people to the director’s cut.”
The line stings, but I watch his reaction instead of defending her. His fingers drum once, then still.
“The journalist gets all of this under embargo,” Riley continues. “We agree on a publication time: mid-gala, when every donor’s phone is within reach and the cameras are already rolling.”
“While you’re on stage,” I say.
Riley nods.
“The plan is I introduce myself as Riley Shaw, child-advocacy investigator,” she says. “Then I add: and DNA-confirmed biological daughter of Robert Mercer. I reference the trust. I say I have documentation of irregular adoptions through Harbor Glen Memorial. I keep it to one minute. Enough to be undeniable, short enough to survive being cut off.”
My skin prickles. I picture the glittering ballroom, the chandeliers, the way gasps ripple through a crowd when a performance goes off script. Harbor Glen treats that gala like an annual census; everyone who matters finds a way to be seen there. Standing on that stage with Riley will be like stepping onto the cliffs during a storm.
“The moment you speak, the article goes live,” I say slowly. “Phones buzz, screens light up, donors read the receipts while they’re staring at the faces attached to them.”
“Exactly,” Riley says. “We flood the zone with corroborated evidence before Evelyn can frame it as a tantrum or a shakedown. We’re not just making accusations; we’re handing people the paper trail while their champagne is still bubbling.”
Daniel swallows, throat working.
“You keep saying ‘corroborated,’” he says. “What doesn’t count yet?”
Riley’s gaze shifts to him, more precise now.
“The financials,” she says. “I can show babies disappearing on paper, records massaged, ‘charity care’ cases that end in sealed adoptions. But I need the money trail that ties the Mercer Foundation to the shell organizations paying stipends, legal fees, whatever they used to grease this. That’s where you come in.”
The room tightens around his silence. Outside, a truck rumbles past, headlights slicing across the office ceiling. The radiator gives a halfhearted clank, then lapses back into its uneven ticking.
Daniel laces his fingers together.
“You want me to steal from my own family,” he says.
“I want you to access records the public has no prayer of seeing,” Riley replies. “You don’t have to plant anything. You don’t have to hack anything. You log into the foundation database like you always do, you copy what’s already there, and you walk back out.”
“They track access,” he says. “There are logs. Timestamps. My user ID.”
“Then we get one shot,” she says. “In and out in under an hour. No fishing expeditions. We go in knowing exactly what we need.”
She reaches for a notepad and starts listing in block letters: DISBURSEMENTS TO PARTNER ORGS, OFFSHORE DONOR ADVISED FUNDS, LEGAL FEES TIED TO SEALED ADOPTION CASES, INTERNAL MEMOS ON “SPECIAL ARRANGEMENTS.”
“You know the system better than I do,” she adds. “What else points toward baby laundering without saying baby laundering?”
The phrase makes my stomach turn, but it fits too well to ignore.
Daniel leans forward, eyes on the notepad. I watch his shoulders as thoughts click into place.
“Look for discretionary grants,” he says slowly. “Line items coded as ‘emergency family support’ or ‘continuity stabilization.’ Those often bypass the normal approval tree. And the donor-advised funds that only give to one or two tiny nonprofits with no web presence—that’s where you hide things. The memos will reference ‘complex custody matters.’”
“Can you pull the founding documents for those nonprofits?” Riley asks. “Board members, registered agents, addresses?”
“Yes,” he says. “If Legal hasn’t moved them to encrypted storage.”
“Then we start with what hasn’t been scrubbed,” she says. “Anything you get us is more than we have now.”
He straightens, pushing his hands through his hair. The gesture messes the careful part Evelyn’s barber always gives him. For the first time, he looks like the man I met at a nonprofit fundraiser, sleeves rolled up, talking about harm reduction instead of legacy.
“You understand what this means,” he says, looking from Riley to me. “If they catch me, there’s no going back. I won’t just lose my job. They’ll paint me as a traitor, ungrateful, unstable. They’ll fold that into whatever story they’re already writing about you, Hannah.”
“They’re already doing that,” I say gently. “With the therapist, with the theft, with the NDA. You saw the bracelet in my luggage. You know that wasn’t an accident.”
His eyes lock onto mine, and I watch the memory drag across his face.
“You’re sure,” he says quietly. “About turning this into a public spectacle.”
I think of Evelyn’s hand gliding the envelope toward me in the hotel bar, of my mother’s voice shaking when she talked about the paper baby that never came home, of Riley tracing lines on the map with a finger that didn’t tremble.
“She gave me her price,” I say. “I’m giving her mine.”
Riley caps the pen with a decisive click.
“The question isn’t whether this becomes a spectacle,” she says. “The gala is already that. The question is whether the right people get seen under the lights.”
Silence settles for a beat, then Daniel nods once, a short, stunned movement.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll do it.”
The words land between us like a new piece on a chessboard.
“Say it again,” Riley says. “Clearer.”
His mouth tightens, but he doesn’t look away.
“I’ll pull the files,” he says. “Financial links, memos, anything that shows money moving to keep these adoptions off the books. I’ll go in after hours; I still have full access. I’ll bring everything back here, and you can mirror it before we loop in the journalist.”
My chest lifts on a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“We’ll back you up,” I say. “If this goes sideways, you’re not going down alone.”
He gives a rough laugh.
“That’s the problem,” he says. “We might all go down together.”
“Better than going down separately while pretending we’re fine,” I say.
Riley stands and moves to the map, sliding fresh pushpins into the cork near the hospital and the foundation’s waterfront office. She scribbles GALA PLAN on an index card and pins it near the Mercer crest she’s doodled in one corner, the abstract wave now tangled in red thread.
“Roles,” she says. “Daniel, you’re retrieval. Hannah, you’re internal corroboration—cross-checking what he brings against what you already know from the house and the trust. And you’re also my onstage anchor.”
“Onstage,” I repeat.
“I’m not walking into that ballroom alone,” she says without turning. “They’ll swallow me. I need you visibly, physically beside me. You’re their approved daughter-in-law. You bridge the gap between their world and mine.”
Heat crawls up my neck. I picture Evelyn’s face when Riley says her name into the microphone, when the article pings donors’ phones, when cameras swing toward us.
“You’re sure you want me on stage and not in the crowd filming?” I ask.
Riley finally looks back over her shoulder.
“Your mother-in-law’s whole strategy has been to isolate us and pick us off,” she says. “Putting us shoulder to shoulder under her own chandeliers sends a message before we even open our mouths.”
“And the journalist?” Daniel asks. “How do you know she won’t tip my mother off early for a better quote?”
“Because Evelyn can’t give her what we can,” Riley says. “Documents. DNA. A pattern that connects Harbor Glen to a national story. My friend knows reputations are built on the stories powerful people don’t want told, not the ones they pitch in press releases.”
She sits back down and opens a blank email draft, fingers poised above the keys. The cursor blinks, waiting.
“We give her an outline tonight,” Riley says. “No attachments yet. Just enough to make her clear her schedule for gala night.”
The three of us lean over the table as she starts to type: I have a story for you. Illegal adoptions laundered through a hospital that wears a saint’s halo. A secret trust for a second daughter. DNA that puts a stolen child in the same room as the woman who erased her.
I watch the words form, my throat dry. The radiator hisses, the harbor lights flicker beyond the glass, and somewhere up on the hill the hospital’s automatic doors swish open to admit another patient under the wave crest.
“Last chance to back out,” Riley says without looking up.
Daniel reaches for my hand under the table. His fingers are cold, grip uncertain but present.
“No more backing out,” I say. “We already walked out on the life raft.”
Riley hits save instead of send, for now, and writes a time in the subject line: GALA – HOLD FOR 9:15 PM.
She pins a copy of that time under the index card on the map, the number hanging over Harbor Glen like a storm warning.
“Then it’s decided,” she says. “By the time the first toast ends at that gala, either the story will be out in the world, or we will be.”
The sentence hangs there, heavy and electric. I stare at the red threads converging on the estate and the hospital, and I hear the faint echo of the harbor’s waves against the seawall, patient and relentless.
“Daniel,” I say quietly, “when do you go in?”
He checks the time on his watch, then looks toward the window where the foundation wing glows in the distance.
“Tonight,” he says. “While Harbor Glen is asleep and my mother thinks she still owns the script.”
None of us move for a beat. Then Riley shuts her laptop with a soft click, and the three of us start gathering papers, each of us lifting a corner of the story we’re about to drop on her stage.