Alonzo was on the phone before he reached the hallway.
“Sylvia.
She’s moving on the server records.
Tonight.”
A pause.
Then: “Which server?”
“My father’s legal archive.
The one with the original guardianship transfer documents.
If she gets to those files before we do—”
“I’ll call the firm’s IT security.
They can lock the archive remotely.
Give me ten minutes.” Another pause.
“Who sent you the message?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Find out.
If it’s someone inside her circle, that’s a witness we haven’t accounted for.”
Alonzo hung up and looked at the message again.
The number was local.
He called it back.
It rang twice.
“I wasn’t sure you’d call back,” said a man’s voice.
Careful.
Slightly hoarse.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Gerald.
I’ve worked for Portia’s legal firm for nine years.
I was the one who filed the restraining order.” A silence.
“I didn’t know what I was filing.
I was told it was a standard protective measure.
I didn’t ask enough questions.
I’ve been asking them for the last two years.”
Alonzo said nothing.
He let the man continue.
“She called me an hour ago.
She wants the guardianship file pulled and certain pages removed before morning.
She has someone who can access the physical archive.” Gerald’s voice was very quiet.
“I’m not going to help her do that.
I’m also not going to pretend I have clean hands here.
But I’m not going to help her destroy evidence.”
“Can you get to the archive before her person does?”
“I’m already here.
I’m sitting in the parking structure across from the building.
I’ve been here for forty minutes.”
“Stay there.
Don’t go in.
Don’t let anyone in.
I’m sending someone to you.”
Alonzo called his investigator next.
Two minutes.
An address.
A name.
Then he went back to the sitting room doorway.
Renata looked up.
She had not moved from her chair.
“I have to go out for an hour,” he said.
“Will you stay with Maisie?”
Renata looked at her sleeping daughter.
“Yes,” she said.
“Go.”
—
The law firm’s archive was in a building twelve minutes from the estate.
Alonzo arrived to find his investigator already in the parking structure, standing beside a thin man in a rumpled suit who was holding a cardboard coffee cup with both hands as though it were the only stable thing available.
“Gerald,” Alonzo said.
The man looked up.
“You came yourself.”
“Yes.”
Gerald reached into his jacket and produced a USB drive.
“I made a copy of the full file two weeks ago.
Every page.
Including the original filing instructions, which have Portia’s personal email address in the header.” He held it out.
“I should have done this a long time ago.”
Alonzo took the drive.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was afraid of her.” Gerald looked at the coffee cup.
“I watched what she did to Renata.
I told myself it wasn’t my business.
That I hadn’t known.
That I couldn’t prove anything.” He paused.
“Then I found out about the little girl.
What happened tonight.
And I thought — at some point you have to decide what kind of person you are.”
Alonzo put the drive in his pocket.
“I’ll need you to give a formal statement.”
“I know.
I’ll do it.” Gerald finally looked up properly.
“She had someone go into the building twenty minutes ago.
Side entrance.
I have the footage on my phone — I was recording from the car.”
“Send it to this number.” Alonzo gave him his investigator’s contact.
“Right now, before anything else.”
Gerald sent it.
Alonzo looked at his investigator.
“The archive?”
“Sylvia’s IT contact locked it remotely eighteen minutes ago.
Whoever went in got nothing.”
Alonzo nodded.
He looked up at the building — glass and steel, dark at this hour except for the lobby lights — and thought about the three years that had been built inside it.
The documents.
The signatures.
The careful, patient architecture of a lie.
“She’s going to find out the archive is locked,” he said.
“Yes,” his investigator said.
“And she’ll know we have the copy.”
“Yes.”
“Then she’ll know it’s over.”
His investigator said nothing.
That was answer enough.
Alonzo’s phone rang.
Sylvia.
“The motion is drafted,” she said.
“I’ll file at eight tomorrow morning.
Given what Gerald’s footage shows — an attempt to tamper with archived legal documents — I’m going to request an emergency hearing.
The forged restraining order plus the tampering attempt plus the witness statements from tonight.” A pause.
“Alonzo.
This is enough.
This is more than enough.”
He stood in the parking structure in the cold, the USB drive in his pocket, and let that land.
“File it,” he said.
He drove back to the estate.
Maisie was still asleep.
Renata was in the same chair.
She had turned off the overhead light and sat in the glow from the hallway, and she looked up when he came in.
“Did you get it?” she said.
“We got it.”
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Then opened them.
“Is it over?”
“The worst of it,” he said.
“The rest will take time.”
She nodded.
She had always understood that some things take time.
Alonzo sat down across from her, and they kept watch over their daughter together until the first grey light came through the window and Maisie opened her eyes and looked at both of them and said, simply, “You’re both still here.”
“Yes,” Renata said.
“Good,” said Maisie.
And went back to sleep.