A narrow passage appeared.
The hidden space was three feet deep and the full width of the unit.
Metal shelves lined the rear wall.
On them sat document boxes wrapped in plastic, two locked file cases, an old tape recorder, six reels of magnetic tape, a leather briefcase, and a small wooden cradle.
The cradle was empty.
A mobile of yellow stars hung above it.
One star turned slowly in the draft.
Emma stepped closer.
“That’s creepy.”
Claire lifted the lantern.
At the center of the hidden space stood a child-sized school desk.
On the desk was a white envelope.
Her name was written across the front.
Not Claire Hale, the name she had used during her marriage.
Claire Bennett.
The name listed on the original birth certificate June had given her when she turned eighteen.
Claire reached for the envelope.
A noise sounded outside.
Tires on wet pavement.
She switched off both lanterns.
The unit vanished into darkness.
Emma inhaled sharply.
Claire touched one finger to her lips.
Headlights moved across the open doorway.
A vehicle rolled slowly along the row.
Not Sam’s golf cart.
The engine was too deep.
The black Navigator stopped outside Unit 214.
Claire guided Emma behind the false wall and pulled the plywood panel almost closed.
Through a narrow gap, she saw polished black shoes step onto the pavement.
A second pair followed.
Work boots.
The man in the charcoal suit entered.
His companion wore jeans, a rain jacket, and black gloves.
The suited man looked around.
“He’s been inside,” the second man said.
The voice was low and rough.
“Sam?”
“Someone. Boxes moved.”
The suited man approached the sewing cabinet.
He lifted the charcoal portrait.
For several seconds, he stared at the words on the back.
Then he placed it face down.
“Find the partition,” he said.
Emma’s fingers tightened around Claire’s wrist.
Claire reached into her backpack and opened the camera on her phone.
No flash.
No shutter sound.
She recorded through the gap.
The man in gloves moved the mattress.
He examined the rear wall.
“Here.”
The suited man removed his jacket.
His white shirt was dry despite the storm.
He stepped closer to the plywood.
Claire could hear Emma breathing.
She covered her daughter’s mouth gently, not to silence her completely, but to slow the rhythm.
The suited man reached toward the panel.
A golf cart horn blared outside.
Sam’s voice filled the row.
“Facility’s closed!”
The men froze.
The suited man lowered his hand.
Sam stopped the cart beside the Navigator.
“You’re trespassing.”
“I’m speaking with the new owner.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Her car is.”
“She left with a friend.”
The suited man studied him.
“You lied more convincingly when I offered you money.”
“And you looked smarter before you broke into my facility.”
“Did you call the police?”
“I called someone.”
“Not the same thing.”
The man in gloves moved toward Sam.
The suited man raised one hand.
“No.”
One word.
Quiet.
Controlled.
The gloved man stopped.
The suited man put on his jacket.
“Tell Ms. Bennett the offer expires at midnight.”
“Which offer?”
“The generous one.”
They walked out.
The Navigator reversed down the row and disappeared.
Claire waited until Sam closed and locked the gate.
Then she emerged.
Sam stood outside the unit, pale with anger.
“You told me not to sleep in here,” Claire said.
“That’s what you took from this?”
“You bought us time.”
“Not enough.”
Claire showed him the recording.
“You got their faces?”
“His. The other man kept his hood up.”
Sam looked at the hidden space.
“I’ve managed this place for seventeen years. I never knew that was there.”
“Do you have a hand truck?”
“Claire.”
“Do you?”
He stared at her for a moment.
“Yes.”
“We’re moving everything in the hidden space.”
“To where?”
“Your office has cameras.”
“My office also has windows.”
“Then we move the most important items to my car, photograph the rest, and leave obvious decoys.”
“You have no idea what’s important.”
Claire looked at the envelope bearing her name.
“I know where to begin.”
She opened it.
Inside was a letter and a Polaroid photograph.
The photograph showed June Mercer standing beside another woman outside a red brick building.
June looked younger.
Her hair was dark.
The other woman was small, with wavy brown hair and a green coat.
On the back, someone had written:
June and Maggie, St. Agnes, October 1986.
Claire read the letter.
My dearest Claire,
If this reached you, then June kept the one promise I had no right to ask of her.
You were told I abandoned you.
I did not.
You were told I signed papers giving you away.
I did not.
You were told I never came back for you.
I came back until returning became the most dangerous thing I could do.
My name was Margaret Bennett.
For many years, I lived as Marian Holloway because the men who took you believed Margaret Bennett was dead.
The proof is in this room.
Do not carry all of it in one place.
Do not trust the Whitmore name.
And before you judge June, understand that she saved your life twice.
Once when you were an infant.
Once when she kept me from taking you back before I knew who was watching.
I wanted to tell you.
I failed.
But I did not forget you for a single day.
Your mother,
Maggie
Claire read the letter twice.
Then she folded it with precise edges.
Emma watched her.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
It was the first honest answer Claire could manage.
Emma looked at the Polaroid.
“That woman is your mom?”
“It appears so.”
“She looks like you.”
Claire looked again.
The woman had Claire’s chin.
Claire’s eyes.
Claire’s habit of holding one shoulder slightly higher than the other.
A resemblance could be imagined.
This one felt like recognition.
Emma touched the letter.
“She said Grandma June saved you.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Grandma June tell us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you mad at her?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Emma leaned against Claire’s arm.
“You always know.”
“No. I usually wait until I know.”
Sam looked away, giving them the privacy of not being watched.
Claire allowed herself ten seconds.
Ten seconds to feel the weight of a mother who had not abandoned her.
Ten seconds to hear every foster parent, every teacher, every social worker who had described her as unwanted.
Ten seconds to remember June standing in the kitchen, saying, Your mother had troubles she couldn’t outrun.
Then Claire put the letter inside a plastic sleeve.
“Now we work.”
They emptied the hidden space in forty-three minutes.
Claire photographed every box before moving it.
She made three lists.
Take immediately.
Hide nearby.
Leave as decoy.
The leather briefcase contained adoption files.
Not official records.
Copies.
Dozens of them.
Each file held a young mother’s name, a child’s birth date, a payment amount, and the name of an adoptive family.
Some pages were signed.
Others appeared forged.
Several bore the letterhead of Whitmore, Lane and Prescott, Attorneys at Law.
The oldest partner listed was Arthur Whitmore.
The grandfather of Grant Whitmore, whose face Claire recognized from billboards across Columbus.
Grant was the chief executive of Whitmore Urban Development.
His company was seeking city approval for a riverfront project called Agnes Landing.
Luxury apartments.
Retail space.
A hotel.
The project included the abandoned St. Agnes property and several surrounding parcels.
Claire had seen it on the news.
Jobs, progress, renewal.
The kind of development politicians praised in rooms where no one being displaced could afford the appetizers.
The first file in the briefcase belonged to Margaret Anne Bennett.
Age nineteen.
Admitted to St. Agnes on October 10, 1986.
Infant delivered October 17.
Female.
Seven pounds, four ounces.
The line for legal surrender contained a signature.
Margaret Bennett.
Below it, someone had written PAID in red pencil.
Claire compared the signature to the letter.
Different slope.
Different capital M.
Different hand.
The placement record listed no adoptive family.
Instead, it showed a code.
W-17.
Emma read over her shoulder.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
The next box contained bank ledgers.
Entries were identified by the same codes.
W-17 appeared beside a deposit for $18,000 made on October 20, 1986.
Another column listed A.W.
Arthur Whitmore.
Claire photographed the page.
Sam packed the tape recorder and reels into his office safe.
The cash, letters, adoption files, and one ledger went into the Honda beneath the spare tire.
The remaining boxes were moved into an unrented unit two rows away.
Sam chose one whose lock appeared corroded but worked.
They left the steel trunk and several empty document boxes behind the false wall.
Claire placed old tax files inside them to create weight.
At 10:08, she screwed the panel back into place.
At 10:17, they drove to a motel near Hilliard.
Claire paid for three nights in cash.
The clerk barely glanced at them.
Room 116 smelled of bleach and old cigarettes.
Emma ran her hand over the white bedspread.
“Can I jump?”
“No.”
“Dad used to let me.”
“Your father was irresponsible in hotels.”
“Only the cheap ones.”
“Especially the cheap ones.”
Emma jumped once.
Claire pretended not to see.
They showered.
They ate crackers, peanut butter, and two apples from a grocery bag.
Then Emma slept with the charcoal portrait propped against the lamp.
Claire sat at the small table by the window.
The parking lot was empty except for their Honda, a delivery van, and a pickup truck with Kentucky plates.
She opened the leather briefcase.
There were thirty-nine infant files.
Thirty-nine children removed or sold through St. Agnes between 1978 and 1988.
Claire created a spreadsheet on her phone.
Mother.
Birth date.
Child.
Code.
Payment.
Attorney.
Placement family.
Several names repeated.
Arthur Whitmore.
Dr. Stephen Vale.
Sister Catherine Doyle.
Judge Edwin Prescott.
All were dead.
At least, Claire assumed they were.
She searched public records and old newspaper archives.
Arthur Whitmore had died in 2004.
Judge Prescott in 1999.
Sister Catherine in 2017.
Dr. Stephen Vale’s obituary appeared in 2011.
The institutions connected to them remained.
The Whitmore law firm had merged twice and now occupied three floors of a downtown tower.
The Vale Foundation operated women’s clinics across Ohio.
St. Agnes belonged to a nonprofit controlled by Whitmore Development.
A forty-year-old secret could outlive everyone who created it.
It only needed buildings, money, and people who benefited from silence.
At 12:43 a.m., Claire found Marian Holloway’s obituary.
Marian Elise Holloway, 77, died peacefully on January 28 at Green Meadows Care Center. No surviving family.
The obituary used a photograph of Marian at seventy.
Gray hair.
Gloves.
A face Claire recognized even beneath the years.
Maggie.
Her mother had died three months earlier.
Alone, according to the obituary.
Claire read the sentence until it blurred.
Then she opened another envelope from the hidden room.
Inside were photographs of Claire at different ages.
Claire at ten, leaving elementary school.
Claire at thirteen, playing softball.
Claire at sixteen, carrying groceries beside June.
Claire at high school graduation.
Claire holding newborn Emma outside Riverside Methodist Hospital.
Some photographs had been taken from far away.
Others were close enough that Maggie must have stood in a crowd.
On the back of the graduation picture, Maggie had written:
She looked for me twice. I stayed behind the blue umbrella.
Claire remembered the umbrella.
Not clearly.
A shape at the edge of the football field.
A woman who turned away when Claire looked toward her.
She pressed her knuckles against her mouth.
She did not cry loudly.
She had learned long ago that grief did not become more true when performed.
But tears moved down her face while Emma slept.
At 1:12, Claire’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered without speaking.
A man breathed softly on the other end.
Then Grant Whitmore said, “You missed the deadline.”
Claire recognized his voice from campaign advertisements and business interviews.
The man at the auction had not been Grant.
This voice belonged to someone above him.
“I wasn’t aware we had an appointment,” Claire said.
“You were offered ten thousand dollars.”
“For property I legally purchased.”
“For trash.”
“Your employee followed me, frightened a shelter manager, trespassed inside my storage unit, and searched for a hidden wall.”
Silence.
Not shock.
Calculation.
“You recorded him,” Grant said.
It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“Then you understand that he never touched you.”
“He didn’t need to.”
“You’re homeless, Ms. Bennett.”
Claire looked at Emma.
“I’m in a motel.”
“For three nights. Perhaps four if you avoid unnecessary meals.”
He knew how much cash she had found.
Or he was guessing accurately.
Neither possibility comforted her.
“What do you want?” Claire asked.
“The contents of Unit 214.”
“Why?”
“Because they belong to my family.”
“Then your family should have paid the storage bill.”
“They were stolen.”
“File a police report.”
“That would create complications.”
“For you.”
“For many people.”
Claire opened the ledger to the entry marked W-17.
“Did Arthur Whitmore pay eighteen thousand dollars for me?”
For the first time, Grant did not respond immediately.
When he spoke, his voice was colder.
“You should think very carefully before teaching your daughter that curiosity matters more than safety.”
Claire stood.
Her chair legs scraped the floor.
“If your employee comes near my daughter again, the recording goes to every television station in Ohio.”
“You have no idea what the recording shows.”
“I don’t need to. I only need reporters to ask why a Whitmore representative broke into a forty-seven-dollar storage unit.”
“You think reporters protect people like you?”
“No.”
“Then be reasonable.”
“I think reporters enjoy powerful people behaving strangely.”
Another silence.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Grant said. “Your debts paid. A leased apartment for one year. No publicity. No legal conflict.”
“You researched my debts.”
“I research obstacles.”
Claire looked at the photographs spread across the table.
Her mother had spent forty years hiding from this family.
“You’re demolishing St. Agnes,” she said.
“We’re rebuilding a neglected district.”
“The original records weren’t destroyed in the fire.”
A breath.
Small.
Sharp.
Grant recovered quickly.
“You found the letter.”
“I found enough.”
“Enough to misunderstand.”
“Then explain.”
“I don’t discuss family history on unsecured phone lines.”
“You called me.”
“To make a final offer.”
“Your offers keep increasing.”
“Your problems will too.”
The line went dead.
Claire immediately saved the audio recording.
Then she pulled the curtain aside.
A sedan had parked beside the delivery van.
No one got out.
She woke Emma.
“Shoes on.”
Emma sat up without complaining.
That frightened Claire more than the phone call.
Children adapted to danger too quickly when adults failed them often enough.
They packed in four minutes.
Claire left through the rear emergency exit and walked Emma behind the motel to a gas station.
From there, she called Sam.
He answered on the second ring.
“Something wrong?”
“Grant Whitmore called.”
Sam swore.
“Is there another place we can stay?”
“My sister has a finished basement in Dublin.”
“I don’t want to involve your family.”
“You think they aren’t involved now?”
“Sam—”
“Someone cut my fence, broke into my property, and threatened a customer. I became involved before you learned my last name.”
Claire looked through the gas station window.
The sedan remained beside the motel.
“I need fifteen minutes.”
“You have ten. My sister drives fast when she’s angry.”
Sam’s sister arrived in a red minivan.
Her name was Rosa Alvarez.
She was sixty-one, five feet tall, and wore flannel pajama pants under a long raincoat.
She opened the sliding door.
“Get in.”
Claire hesitated.
Rosa pointed toward the motel.
“You can explain while I drive, or we can stand here until the expensive man finds us.”
They got in.
Rosa drove north without asking permission.
She checked her mirrors often and took three unnecessary turns.
“You’ve done this before,” Claire said.
“I raised four teenagers.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You haven’t met my youngest.”
Rosa’s house stood on a quiet cul-de-sac with identical mailboxes and trimmed maple trees.
The basement had a couch, a bathroom, and a small bedroom filled with craft supplies.
Emma was asleep again within minutes.
Rosa made coffee.
Sam joined them at two-thirty in the morning, carrying the tape recorder and two boxes from his office safe.
“I checked the cameras,” he said. “The Navigator entered using an employee code.”
“Whose?” Claire asked.
“My assistant’s.”
“Did she give it to them?”
“She says no.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I believe she owes eight thousand dollars on a car and has a son at Ohio State.”
Claire understood.
Grant Whitmore did not need loyalty.
He needed pressure points.
Sam set the tape recorder on the kitchen table.
It was a portable reel-to-reel machine from the 1980s, heavy and rectangular, with a cracked leather handle.
Rosa found an extension cord.
The first reel was labeled OCTOBER 1986.
Claire threaded the tape through the guides.
Her fingers were steady until she pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then a woman spoke.
Her voice was young.
Tired.
“My name is Margaret Anne Bennett. It is October 26, 1986. I am making this recording because June says memory is not proof.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Maggie’s voice continued.
“I gave birth to a girl on October seventeenth at St. Agnes. I heard her cry. A nurse placed her on my chest. She had dark hair and a small red mark beneath her left ear.”
Claire touched the birthmark beneath her own ear.
“They took her away after less than a minute. Sister Catherine said my baby was having trouble breathing. Dr. Vale came later and told me she died. He would not let me see her. He said the body had already been transferred.”
The tape clicked.
Maggie inhaled.
“I did not believe him. June worked in the laundry. She found a bracelet in a wastebasket. Baby Girl Bennett. The next night, she saw Arthur Whitmore carrying an infant through the service hall. She followed him to the rear parking lot. The baby was alive.”
Rosa covered her mouth.
Sam stared at the machine.
“June brought me the bracelet,” Maggie said. “She said the child was taken to a private home on Bryden Road. We went there three days later. A social worker named Ellen Mercer lived at the address.”
Claire opened her eyes.
Mercer.
June Mercer.
“She did not have my baby,” Maggie continued. “She said Arthur delivered infants to temporary homes before adoption papers were completed. She said the babies were moved when questions were asked. She was frightened. She wanted money to help us. We had none.”
The tape trembled with a low mechanical hum.
“June stole the master ledger from Sister Catherine’s office. We found my daughter listed as W-17. There were other babies. Many others. The payments were recorded as donations.”
The recording stopped.
Not gradually.
The tape had been cut.
Emma stood on the basement stairs.
No one had heard her come up.
“Grandma June stole a baby book?”
Claire turned off the recorder.
“She stole evidence.”
“Did she find you?”
“Eventually.”
“Then why were you in foster care?”
Claire looked at the next tape.
She did not know whether she wanted the answer.
She loaded the reel labeled 1987–1994.
Maggie’s voice had changed.
Less frightened.
More guarded.
“We found Claire in May 1987. She was living with a couple in Dayton under the name Caroline Wells. The adoption had failed. The husband left. The wife entered treatment. County services took the baby.”
Claire’s earliest foster records listed Caroline Wells as a previous guardian.
She had always been told the woman was a family friend of her biological mother.
Maggie continued.
“I tried to claim her. Arthur Whitmore produced the surrender document. He said I had signed it. He said if I challenged the adoption, I would be arrested for stealing confidential records and attempting to extort St. Agnes.”
Claire remembered her childhood case file.
Biological mother whereabouts unknown.
Possible criminal history.
No contact recommended.
“I had no lawyer. No money. June believed we could expose them through the newspaper. The reporter she contacted disappeared for two weeks and returned saying there was no story. His apartment burned the next month.”
The tape popped.
“I kept watching Claire. I kept collecting names. June became a licensed foster parent so she could request placement when Claire returned to county care. It took seven years.”
Claire stared at the machine.
June had not simply happened to foster her.
June had spent years positioning herself close enough to protect her.
“She took Claire in August 1994,” Maggie said. “Arthur’s son, Thomas Whitmore, visited June two days later. He did not threaten her directly. Men like him rarely do. He told her Claire’s placement would remain stable if old misunderstandings stayed buried.”
Grant’s father.
Thomas Whitmore.
Current chairman of the Whitmore Foundation.
Still alive.
Still powerful.
Maggie’s voice grew quiet.
“June asked me to stay away. I hated her for it. Then she showed me photographs of two men watching Claire’s school. She said the Whitmores were afraid I would make Claire a witness to something she could not remember.”
The tape stopped again.
Claire pressed rewind.
She listened to the final sentence twice.
“Why would they watch a child?” Rosa asked.
“Because children grow up,” Claire said.
The third tape contained names, dates, and meetings.
Maggie described following Arthur Whitmore to banks, churches, private homes, and county offices.
She recorded license plates.
She copied documents.
She tracked several children from the ledger.
Some had grown up in wealthy families.
Some had vanished from records.
Two had died under unusual circumstances after attempting to locate their biological mothers.
Maggie never accused without evidence.
She stated facts.
Dates.
Addresses.
Names.
Her restraint made the recordings more frightening.
At four-ten in the morning, the tape mentioned a property deed.
“St. Agnes and the river parcel were donated in 1952 by Lillian Rose Bennett, my grandmother. The deed required the land to be used for the care of mothers and children. If the institution closed or the land was used commercially, ownership would return to Lillian’s surviving descendants.”
Claire sat forward.
Maggie continued.
“Arthur concealed the reversion clause when Whitmore Holdings acquired the surrounding parcels. He believed the original deed was destroyed in the county records fire of 1979. It was not. Lillian kept a certified copy inside a blue Bible.”
June’s Bible lay on the table.
Claire opened it.
She had searched the cover.
The pages.
The back binding where the note was hidden.
Now she examined the spine.
The leather had been repaired with a narrow strip of blue cloth.
Claire used a butter knife to lift the edge.
A folded document slid out.
Rosa whispered, “Dear God.”
The paper was thick and brittle.
A raised county seal remained visible beneath the folds.
Deed of Gift.
Lillian Rose Bennett to the Sisters of St. Agnes Charitable Home.
The language was dense, but the reversion clause appeared on the second page.
Should the property cease to serve its charitable purpose, title shall revert to the donor or the donor’s lawful descendants.
Claire read the parcel description.
It covered eleven acres along the Scioto River.
The center of Grant Whitmore’s proposed development.
Rosa pulled up an article on her tablet.
“Agnes Landing is valued at two hundred and sixty million dollars.”
Sam exhaled.
“That’s why they wanted the unit.”
“Partly,” Claire said.
She looked at the adoption ledger.
“If the deed were the only problem, they could challenge it in court.”
“What else is there?” Emma asked.
“Proof that their family didn’t just take land.”
Rosa leaned closer to the document.
“Could this make the land yours?”
“Possibly. If Maggie was Lillian’s only surviving descendant and if the deed remains enforceable.”
“You could be rich,” Emma said.
Claire folded the deed carefully.
“Or tied up in court for ten years.”
“But not homeless.”
Grant Whitmore’s voice returned to her.
Your problems will increase.
He had known about the cash in the unit.
He probably knew about the deed.
But had he known about the tapes?
Had he known Maggie copied the adoption files?
The fourth reel was labeled THOMAS.
Claire loaded it.
Maggie spoke first.
“This is June 14, 1995. Thomas Whitmore asked to meet me at Union Station.”
A man’s voice followed.
Smooth.
Educated.
Older than Claire expected.
“You have confused persistence with power, Margaret.”
“You know my name.”
“I know many names.”
“You stole my daughter.”
“My father arranged a lawful placement.”
“My signature was forged.”
“That allegation was reviewed.”
“By a judge who received payments from your father.”
A pause.
“You should consider what Claire needs,” Thomas said.
“She needs the truth.”
“Children need stability. Food. Education. A home free from scandal.”
“She has those things because June gave them to her.”
“And June will continue giving them, provided no one disrupts the arrangement.”
“You’re threatening to remove her.”
“I’m reminding you that institutions make decisions based on evidence. Your history includes theft, unstable housing, false accusations, and repeated contact after a court order.”
“Your family created that history.”
“History belongs to whoever can document it.”
Maggie’s voice sharpened.
“I’m documenting this.”
Silence.
Long enough that Claire imagined Thomas looking at the recorder hidden inside Maggie’s coat.
Then Thomas said, “You don’t have the original ledger.”
Maggie did not answer.
“The fire destroyed it,” he continued.
“Then you have nothing to fear.”
Another pause.
When Thomas spoke again, the smoothness had left his voice.
“Do not approach Claire. Do not approach my family. Do not approach St. Agnes.”
“Or what?”
“Or someone less patient will become responsible for solving this.”
The recording ended.
Emma moved beside Claire.
“Is that man still alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is he Grant’s dad?”
“Yes.”
“Does Grant know what he did?”
Claire looked at the phone.
At 5:03 a message arrived from Grant.
My father would like to speak with you.
An address followed.
Whitmore House.
Bexley, Ohio.
Ten a.m.
Rosa read the message.
“You’re not going.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Absolutely not.”
“He knows we found something. I need to know what he thinks we found.”
“That sounds like something people say before entering a mansion and disappearing.”
“I won’t go alone.”
Sam shook his head.
“I manage storage units. I’m not security.”
“You don’t need to be.”
Claire looked at Rosa.
“Do you know a lawyer?”
Rosa did.
Nora Alvarez Park was Rosa’s eldest daughter.
She practiced real estate and probate law in downtown Columbus.
She arrived at seven-thirty wearing a navy suit, white sneakers, and the expression of a woman who had been pulled from a peaceful morning into a family emergency and intended to bill someone for it.
Claire showed her the deed first.
Nora read it in silence.
Then the adoption files.
Then the messages.
Finally, she watched the recording of the men entering Unit 214.
“This is either the most valuable forty-seven-dollar purchase in Ohio,” Nora said, “or an extremely well-organized way to get you killed.”
Rosa pointed at her.
“That’s what I said.”
Nora ignored her mother.
“Do not contact Grant Whitmore again without me present.”
“He contacted me.”
“Do not answer.”
“I need information.”
“You need an injunction.”
“Based on what?”
“Potential title interest, threatened destruction of evidence, harassment, trespass, and possibly civil conspiracy.”
“Can you prove any of it today?”
“No.”
“Grant knows that.”
Nora leaned back.
“You’re calmer than most attorneys.”
“I’m too tired to panic.”
“That isn’t the same as calm.”
“It works similarly from the outside.”
Nora examined the deed again.
“The city planning commission votes on the final Agnes Landing approval tomorrow evening. If this document is authentic, the title insurer will stop everything until the claim is resolved.”
