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I’m not investigating. I’m curious. I’m not hurting anyone.

She started with Leigh because Leigh was the one who wouldn’t leave her alone, drifting in and out of her mind all day.

She knew the drill, too. Despite getting fired from her reporter’s job, she’d been damn good at it. There was a flow to this work, and she’d been down this road many times.

Public records first, the way she always had. Property, licenses, anything with a name attached. The Florida condo was there, a deed dated four months ago, two names on it. Leigh M. Gabler and Daniel R. Riggs. So that part was real. That part was exactly what he’d said.

She hadn’t doubted him, but she liked to be thorough. No stone unturned, so to speak.

She texted Renata next, the researcher she’d worked with at the station, the one who could find anyone with a phone number and twenty minutes. Renata still owed her a favor. More than a few favors, actually, and was happy to lend a hand. The woman was easily bored and enjoyed a new challenge.

It was just a quick favor, and off the record. Daniel Riggs, Boston, sixties. Anything ugly?

The reply came back in minutes. Clean as a whistle. IT security consultant, long career, one late wife, no record, no debt, no nothing. He volunteers at a library.

Then the sister. That one was easy, and it was sad. An obituary out of Boston, about six months old. Margaret, gone after a long illness, survived by a devoted husband and a daughter. There was the niece, then, the young woman from the photograph, named in black and white as her mother’s child. Alli read the few short lines twice. A small family, made smaller. She understood why Leigh had wanted those slow days by the water. People always figured out what mattered to them when the shit hit the fan. She’d seen it many times in her work, as she was often talking to people on the worst day of their lives.

So far, there was nothing that should be capturing any of her attention. It was all normal as hell.

But she’d saved the last thing for the end, because it was the thing she had no business touching at all.

The companies.

All of this was none of her damn business. She’d copied the names off the contracts that morning while she’d boxed the desk, more out of habit than suspicion. A reporter wrote things down. Now she ran them, one by one, the way she’d run a dozen sketchy LLCs in her old life. It was then that the back of her neck began to prickle. Maybe her instincts hadn’t gone awry, after all.

None of the companies had a website. None of them had a phone number that rang anywhere. Two of them had been formed within a month of each other, by the same registered agent, at the same suite number in a building that, when she pulled it up, turned out to be a postal store with rented boxes. The kind of company that existed on paper and nowhere else. The kind that was very good at sending invoices and very bad at doing anything to earn them. It would be funny if it weren’t so cliché.

Why would Leigh keep them? Had her instincts been tingling, too?

Leigh hadn’t kept those papers because she was sloppy. Far from it. Leigh wasn’t sloppy about anything from what Alli could see. She’d kept them because she’d noticed something, and she’d wanted to be able to put her hand on the proof.

Okay, Leigh. I see what you saw. You were right to set these contracts aside.

“What are you doing?”

She looked up. Brian was in the doorway in an old college T-shirt, hair flat on one side, holding a glass of water. She hadn’t heard him come down the hall.

“A little homework,” she said with a shrug.

She adored her brother, but he’d never understood her desire to go into journalism. He simply hadn’t been the type to ask “why” a hundred times a day. Their mother had always said he was a much easier child to raise because he didn’t question every little thing.

Brian looked at the laptop, then at her face, then back at the laptop. He clearly didn’t believe her and was deciding whether it was worth the fight.

“Homework,” he repeated.

“Mm.”

He let it sit a second longer, then let it go. What was that saying about the better part of valor? He’d decided it was too late at night, and he was too tired to pursue it.

“Okay.” He took a drink of water. “How’s the new job? Is Winslow loading you up with work already? I heard there is going to be a memorial service for that woman. Are you helping plan it?”

“Her name was Leigh.”

“Sorry. The service for Leigh.”

“I’m working on it with HR. With Jenny.” Alli closed the laptop halfway, which felt like a confession, so she opened it again. “Something small at the office. Boston’s handling the actual funeral.”

“Good. That’s good of you guys.” He pointed the glass at the dog. “She sleeps in here now, apparently. Don’t let Tara see.”