Page 142 of In the Dark of the Past

River looked at the cold coffee. “God, yes.”

“Same,” I said.

He took the mugs and went.

River didn’t let go of my hand.

Chapter Forty-One

River

The week after Grant’s arrest was the strangest kind of busy. The kind where there was always somewhere to be and something to confirm and a call to take, but none of it required the quality of attention the previous three weeks had required. It was the machinery of justice running, which turned out to sound less like triumph and more like paperwork. I had taken too much time off work, only doing virtual visits to keep my small patient pool happy and healthy, but I needed to get back to it.

Solis’s team was in and out of the county building every day. Sean’s proffer sessions were happening in Portland; his attorney had been in contact with the AG’s office twice that I knew of and probably more that I didn’t. Evan’s formal statement was scheduled for the following week—he was still in the AG safe house, and Atlas checked in on him daily with the quiet consistency of someone who had decided he was his responsibility whether he’d agreed to that or not. Vale’s deathbed confirmation had been formally entered into the AG’s evidence record. Rand Miravar had made a preliminary statement and was cooperating in exchange for reduced charges. Jordyn’s earlier statement had been formalized.

The structure the Watchers had built for decades was being systematically taken apart piece by piece by people with federal warrants and forensic accountants and the unhurried competence of an institution that had decided this mattered.

It was good. It was the right machinery. I kept telling myself that when the pace of it frustrated me, which it did more than I expected.

Five days after the arrest, I went to my parents’ house alone.

I hadn’t been back since the night I’d discovered the false bottom in the cedar chest and found the envelope, started reading the letter, and then stopped before taking out my phone with shaking hands and called Finn instead because I’d understood, suddenly, that I wasn’t ready to finish it alone.

The house looked the same. Different furniture, fresh paint, same bones. The same afternoon light through the east windows.

I went upstairs. Into my parents’ old bedroom. The cedar chest was where I’d left it, pushed back against the wall under the window. The false bottom was still open. The envelope was where I’d set it down on the nightstand after Finn handed it back to me.

I picked it up, sat on the floor with my back against the bed, the way I’d sat as a child when I was reading something I didn’t want to be interrupted doing, and I read it from where I’d stopped before. After "The Watchers were never the top of the chain" — the line I’d read once, put down, and carried for weeks. The letter went on.

Follow the money. That's what I was doing when they found me. The allocation trail from the Fund leads somewhere higher than the people who carry out the work. Someone with the authority to bury cases, to reroute complaints, to decide which questions the state ever sees. Someone who has been doing it for years, quietly, from a position that looked like service.

I don't know his name. I knew pieces—an account number, a secondary signature on the transfer authorizations, a pattern in the disbursements that didn't match any public record. I wrote it all down. I hid what I could. I hope you found it.

The man pulling the strings has a deputy. A shadow. Someone to act when he cannot. Someone young enough to be underestimated and trusted enough to move freely. They work in pairs, the way they always have. They have to. The weight of it is too much for one person to carry alone.

You will know you have found them when you find the second list. Not the public record. The one kept off the books, with marks beside the names. The marks aren't a record of what has already happened. They are a schedule.

Your name is on it, River.

I have been afraid of that since the day they first came to me. I have been afraid of it every day since. But I am also the woman who raised you, and I know what you are made of. I know you will not run from this. So I will not ask you to.

What I will ask is this: do it with someone. Not because you are weak. You are not, you never have been. But because the people behind this never work alone. Neither should you.

Do it knowing you were never wrong about your father. Do it knowing the truth is exactly what it is, not the story they built around it.

Your father will be proud of the woman you become. He already is.

I love you, my brave girl. Don't let them take your voice the way they took mine.

— Mom

I sat with it for a while.

The afternoon light moved across the floor the way it did, slow, patient, and indifferent to what was happening in the room. My mother had sat in this house. Had known what was coming. Had made her calculation about what her silence was worth and what it was buying and had decided that keeping me alive was worth everything else.

She had been right about all of it. The Fund. The structure. The name at the top. She hadn’t known it was Grant, but she’d known the shape of it. She’d documented the MR-7 transfers from inside the system while being managed by that same system. She’d written this letter in whatever minutes Stonybrooke allowed her and hidden it in the one place she trusted would survive long enough for me to find it.

She’d warned me about the man pulling the strings and his shadow. She’d warned me that my name was on the list. She’d been right about all of it, and all of it had been answered. Grant was in federal custody. His network was being dismantled piece by piece. The second list was in the AG’s evidence chain. The shadows—Sean, Cole, Jordyn—were in custody. The name she hadn’t known but had traced the shape of had a face now, and that face was going to trial.