By the time Daniel and I finish encrypting the files he pulled from the foundation server, my eyes sting from staring at screens. Riley’s office smells like burnt coffee, dust, and the faint tang of dry-erase marker. Outside the window, Harbor Glen’s lights bead along the edge of the peninsula, cliffside mansions sitting above the black water like indifferent stars.
“I need a shower and an actual bed,” Riley says, stretching until her spine pops. “My brain feels like it’s been scraped with a spoon.”
Daniel leans against the edge of her desk, arms folded, the glow from her monitors cutting sharp angles across his face.
“Text us when you get in,” I tell her. “Or stay at the motel. There’s room.”
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “I’ve got two deadbolts and a neighbor who plays daytime TV at stadium volume. Plus, I left half my notes there. I sleep better when I know I’m in the same space as the evidence.”
I don’t like it, but the clock on her computer reads 11:38 p.m., and we’re running on fumes. The town outside is winding down: restaurants closing, the last late ferry horns carrying in from the Sound, the hilltop hospital lights burning all night like a promise and a warning.
“Text,” I repeat.
“Yes, mom,” Riley says, but her mouth quirks up at the corner.
We split in the parking lot, the air sharp with salt and woodsmoke from someone’s fireplace on the back roads. Daniel and I head toward the motel; Riley turns the other way, toward the narrow streets where Harbor Glen’s regular people live, below the mansions that pretend not to see them.
Back at the motel, the room heater rattles to life and fills the air with warmed dust and that faint chemical-cleaner tang that never quite goes away. Daniel disappears into the shower, and I sit cross-legged on the bed with my phone, watching the little typing bubble under Riley’s name without any message arriving.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
At twenty, my chest goes tight.
I hit call.
She picks up on the second ring.
“Hey,” she says, a little breathless. “I’m just getting in. Sorry, stairs and winter are not friends.”
Relief rushes through me too fast, leaving a hollow afterburn.
“You okay?” I ask. “You sound—”
I stop. There’s a pause on her end that isn’t just catching her breath.
“Hang on,” Riley murmurs. Her voice drops, a notch I know from the first time we met in the shadow of the docks. “Do you hear that?”
I listen. On her end, there’s a low hum and the echo of a stairwell, the distant thud of a door somewhere below, voices filtered into shapeless noise. Underneath, a thin, metallic rattle.
“Hear what?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “That’s the problem.”
She sucks in air through her teeth.
“My building always smells like curry and weed by this time of night,” she says quietly. “Somebody’s always yelling at a game show or burning dinner. It’s… too clean. I can smell bleach.”
I picture her stairwell: narrow concrete steps, chipped paint, walls plated with ancient notice boards and fire escape maps. The last time I climbed it, the air felt thick with other people’s lives: cooking oil, stale smoke, laundry detergent. The idea of bleach in that mix lands in my stomach like a stone.
“Where are you exactly?” I ask.
“Third floor,” she says. “Top of the last flight. I can see my hallway.”
There’s a silence, weighted.
“Riley,” I say, “talk to me.”
“My door,” she whispers. “It’s not closed.”
My fingers tighten around the phone.
“How open?” I ask.
“An inch,” she says. “Maybe two. I always slam it; the frame sticks. You’ve heard it.”
I have. Every time I’ve visited, her door’s announced itself with a hollow thud and the scrape of swollen wood.
“Go back downstairs,” I say. “Right now. Get outside. Call the police.”
“And tell Harbor Glen’s finest that the Mercer kidnap paperwork lady broke into my apartment?” she replies, voice flat. “Yeah, that’ll end great.”
“Riley.”
“I’m not going in blind,” she says. “I’m not a horror movie extra. But if there’s something there, I need to know what they touched. If they’re still inside, I’ll hear it.”
Her breath shivers once, then steadies.
“Stay on the line,” she says. “If you hear me scream, call 911 and tell them I’ve got active files on Mercer Hospital. Maybe that’ll at least make them write my name correctly.”
My pulse drums in my throat.
“Put me on speaker,” I say. “I’ll talk so they know you’re not alone.”
“Good idea,” she says softly.
A click, a rustle. Her voice is suddenly slightly farther away.
“Okay,” Riley says. “Speaker on. My keys are in my right hand. I’m not announcing myself beyond you.”
“You’re going to be okay,” I say. My voice sounds thinner than I want.
I picture the hallway: battered brown doors, faded unit numbers, an EXIT sign buzzing at the end. Harbor Glen’s social ladder ends here, far below the country club waitlists and the Light the Harbor yacht decks, but the same hospital smell drifts down from the hill, bleaching everything it touches.
Her footsteps are slow, soles whispering over the worn runner.
“Someone left the window at the end of the hall cracked,” she murmurs. “I can feel the draft.”
The phone picks up a faint clink—the keys touching.
“I’m touching the door,” Riley says. “Top edge. No noise inside.”
My nails bite into my palm.
“Open it just enough to see in,” I say. “If anything’s wrong, get out. Please.”
The next sound is a careful scrape of wood and metal, hinge protesting quietly.
The pause on the other side feels like a physical thing, pressing against my chest.
“Living room’s dark,” Riley says. “I left a lamp on. It’s off.”
“That could be a timer,” I say quickly. “A power surge—”
“Lamp doesn’t have a timer,” she cuts in. “And the fridge is humming. Power’s fine.”
Her voice tightens.
“My desk drawers are open,” she adds. “Halfway, like somebody flipped through them and didn’t bother hiding it.”
The motel room closes in around me—the patterned bedspread, the loud heater, the muted TV glow from the neighboring unit. The Mercers’ gala promo flickers silently through the paper-thin wall; I can hear the faint cheer of a recorded crowd.
“Get out,” I say. “We can come back with police, with a landlord, with—”
“This is my home,” she says. “They’re counting on me to run.”
Her shoes cross the threshold. The slight echo tells me she’s in, the door still partway open.
“I’m turning on the light,” she says.
The click is small. Fluorescent buzz fills my ear for a second, then fades as whatever microphone magic adjusts.
“Catalog,” I say, clinging to the part of my brain that knows how trauma reports work. “Talk me through everything you see. That way we have a record even if nobody writes it down.”
Riley lets out a long breath.
“Okay,” she says. “Coat rack by the door is fine. My boots are where I kicked them off this morning. Couch looks normal, blanket heap and all. TV’s off. The coffee table… the coasters are stacked. I never stack them.”
Her detail-work brain is kicking in. I feel mine latch onto it, grateful.
“Desk,” I prompt.
“Drawers are open,” she says again, slower. “Files pulled out. Not rifled, exactly. Stacked. Like someone read them, then put them back in a new order they like better.”
“Maybe they were looking for one specific thing,” I say.
“Then they’d leave a mess,” she answers. “This is—deliberate.”
Her footsteps carry her deeper in, past the living room. I hear faint rustles: papers, the soft tap of something against her bulletin board.
“My map,” she says, voice dropping.
“What about it?” I ask.
“They touched it,” she says. “Pins are shifted. Threads are cut and reattached. They moved the connection lines so Harbor Glen is front and center, and they pinned the Mercer crest from that hospital brochure right on top of it.”
I close my eyes, swallowing hard. I can see the crest in my memory: stylized waves, generous curves, the branding department’s idea of “healing” and “continuity,” printed on everything from donor plaques to the hospital vending machines. It was always supposed to mean safety.
Love and harm in the same set of hands; waves that lift some boats and drown others.
“Photograph it,” I say. “Don’t move anything yet.”
Her phone chimes faintly, evidence of a separate device.
“Got it,” she says. “Okay, moving on. My laptop’s here. Cord is plugged in, light on. Screen is closed, and I left it open. That’s not good.”
“Is it warm?” I ask.
A pause. Fabric rustles.
“Yes,” she says. “Too warm for a machine that should’ve been napping all day. They turned it on. Maybe copied files, maybe just looked. I’ll have to dig into the logs.”
The idea of some Mercers’ tech person standing in Riley’s little living room makes my skin crawl. I look around our motel room, suddenly aware of every vent and camera-shaped shadow, remembering the surveillance files in Evelyn’s cabinet.
“Anything missing?” I ask. “Wallet, cards, obvious stuff.”
“My bag’s on the hook where I left it,” Riley says. “Wallet inside. Cash still there. They don’t care about my money.”
A cupboard door groans open on her end, then closes.
“Kitchen cabinets are intact,” she says. “No weird surprises. The fridge—wait.”
A suction pop.
“The fridge door was cracked,” she says. “Not enough to spoil anything. Just enough to let the light bleed out. Like they wanted me to see it from the hall if the lamp had been on.”
The hairs on my arms rise.
“Riley,” I say. “Where are you now?”
“Kitchen,” she answers. “And there’s something on the table.”
The words flatten, all banter gone.
“What is it?” I ask.
Her shoes scrape once against the tile.
“A piece of paper,” she says. “Folded. In the middle of the table. I don’t leave anything in the middle; it’s one of those habits you pick up in group homes so your stuff doesn’t ‘accidentally’ get tossed.”
My throat goes dry.
“Don’t touch it yet,” I say. “Describe it.”
“Standard printer paper,” she says. “White, a little glossy. There’s a watermark in the corner.”
Her breath catches, and I know before she says it.
“The Mercer crest,” she whispers. “Hospital stationery.”
My vision narrows for a second, spots blooming at the edges.
“They broke in with hospital paper in their pocket.” The words scrape my mouth. “Like a calling card.”
“Arrogance or bait,” Riley says. “Or both.”
Silence hums between us, thick as the fluorescent buzz.
“I’m going to open it,” she says.
“Photo first,” I say quickly. “Top and bottom, before and after. You know this drill.”
The tiny camera sound chirps twice.
“Okay,” she says. “Opening.”
The paper crackles. I hear it more than I hear her next breath.
“Read it,” I say, though part of me wants her to hang up and burn it.
Riley’s voice comes out steady, cold.
“It says,” she reads, “‘Orphans don’t win.’”
The motel room tilts. The heater’s roar, the distant TV, all of it fades into a single point: those three words pressed into hospital paper.
“They know who you are,” I say quietly. “Not just your case. You.”
“Everybody in Harbor Glen knows who isn’t on a yacht,” she snaps. Then her tone softens. “But yeah. This isn’t about Mercer as a system. This is for me.”
I hear the faint crinkle as she holds the note away from her body, like a contaminated specimen.
“Fingerprints,” I say. “We should preserve them. Plastic bag, envelope, something.”
“I have evidence sleeves,” she says. “Perks of the job.”
A drawer slides, a zip sounds.
“Okay,” she says. “Note is in a bag, labeled with time and date. They taught us chain of custody in training. We all laughed about how we’d never be important enough to need it.”
“Do you want to call the police now?” I ask. “A break-in and a threat—that’s enough to put something on record, even here.”
She pauses so long I think the call cut.
“They’ll take a report,” she says finally. “They’ll walk through, nod at the door, give me a pamphlet about renters’ insurance. And when the Mercers’ lawyers hear about it, they’ll mention my ‘history’—foster care, advocacy work, stepping on the hospital’s toes. The cops will remember who sponsors the Light the Harbor parade and the hospital wing. Guess whose credibility takes the hit.”
“So we do nothing?” I ask. “We just let this sit in a bag in your kitchen?”
“We document it,” she says. “For someone who doesn’t answer to the Mercer donor wall.”
I picture the reporter we picked, the one Riley trusts because she once took on a state agency and won. My mind skips ahead: photos of Riley’s ransacked desk, the note on Mercer paper, the crest a faint ghost in the corner.
“We can include it in the file drop,” I say slowly. “Not up front—she’ll want the hard documents first—but as part of the pattern of intimidation. Digital purge, physical threat.”
“Good,” Riley says. “If they’re going to write warnings on hospital stationery, they can see their logo in the article.”
The anger in her voice is a live wire, bright and dangerous. It steadies me.
“Do you want to come here tonight?” I ask. “Motel’s not fancy, but there are two locks and a front desk guy who glares like it’s a sport.”
“Tempting,” she says. “But if I leave now and they’re watching, they’ll know the note worked. They’ll know they got under my skin.”
“You’re allowed to be scared,” I say softly.
She’s quiet for a beat.
“I am,” she says. “My hands are shaking so hard I nearly dropped the phone when I walked in. But fear’s not the point. They’re betting that all the kids who grew up in places like this, who know what it’s like to lose everything, will take a hint and disappear. So the Mercers can keep playing savior on the hill while erasing the kids who don’t fit their narrative.”
The words land between us, heavy and true. The paradox I’ve been circling for weeks sharpens: the same hospital crest on the paper that threatens her also sits above neonatal incubators and charity press releases about giving “orphans” a better life.
“Good deeds don’t erase this,” I say. “Not the note, not the files, not the babies who never made it onto the foundation’s donor wall.”
“Exactly,” she says. “If they wanted me gone, they could’ve done worse than a scare. This is a message, not an attack. For now.”
I hear the faint shuffle of her moving back toward the living room.
“I’m checking the bedroom,” she says. “Then I’m locking every piece of metal this door owns.”
I listen to doors opening, hangers scraping, the muffled thump of drawers.
“Bedroom’s clear,” she reports. “They didn’t touch my clothes. Closet is—”
She breaks off.
“What?” I ask.
“They turned all my photo frames face down on the dresser,” she says quietly. “Every one. Foster home kids, my adoptive parents… the few people who count as family.”
The heater’s hum fills the silence. I picture those frames, glass against chipped wood.
“Do you want to stand them back up?” I ask.
“Not yet,” she says. “I’m taking photos like this first.”
Another camera chirp.
“Okay,” she says after a moment. “I’m putting them back now. I’m not sleeping in a room where my life is facedown because the Mercers don’t like the story.”
Something tight in me loosens at that.
“Call me when you’re in bed,” I say. “I don’t care how late. I’ll keep the phone under my pillow.”
“You and your nurse mom,” she says. “Always on call.”
“We learn it somewhere,” I say.
Her laugh is small but real.
“By the way,” she adds, voice turning brisk again, “tomorrow you’re going back to the estate.”
My stomach flips.
“You’re talking about the rehearsal,” I say.
“You said Evelyn runs through her speeches like she’s auditioning for a god,” Riley says. “The gala acceptance talk is her chance to frame us before we open our mouths. We need ears in that room.”
The next chapter of our plan slots into place: me slipping into a corner while Evelyn polishes her lines about healing families and second chances, recording every word she plans to weaponize.
“She’s already cleaning the servers,” I say. “Now she’s rattling your home. If she’s willing to go that far before the gala, what happens when we’re standing in front of her donors?”
“Then we make sure we’re not standing there alone,” Riley says. “We’ll have Daniel, the files he salvaged, the journalist, the note, the map… and each other.”
The word hangs in the air between us, fragile and solid at once.
“Text me the note photos,” I say. “And your map. I want copies off-site in case someone gets bold with a match.”
“On it,” she says. “I’ll send one more when the locks are double-checked.”
“Triple,” I say.
“Triple,” she echoes.
The line crackles, then goes quiet for a breath.
“Hey, Hannah?” she adds.
“Yeah?”
“Tell your mother-in-law something for me,” she says. “Next time she sends a message, she should spell my name right. It’s Riley Shaw. And I’m not done.”
My chest tightens in a way that hurts and strengthens at the same time.
“I’ll deliver it,” I say.
When we hang up, the motel room feels even smaller, the air thick with cleaner and stale heat. Through the thin wall, the TV promo cuts to footage of the Mercer Foundation’s Light the Harbor parade, boats glittering, the crest projected in glowing waves on the side of the hospital.
I stare at the image, thinking of the note in Riley’s evidence sleeve, the same crest faint in the corner.
Orphans don’t win.
In their world, maybe not. I curl my fingers around my phone, thinking of the server logs, the broken map, the righted picture frames, and the speech Evelyn is rehearsing on that hill.
The question that keeps me awake long after the lights are off isn’t whether we can win against her—but how much of ourselves we’ll lose in the fight to make sure she doesn’t.