Chapter 3

I opened the compass again on the desk. The photograph was creased, but clear: Elias in a summer shirt I had never seen, Nadia Pike laughing against his shoulder, both of them younger than they had any right to be. Engraved inside the lid were initials: E.C. + N.P. Below them, the code T-7-19.

“That trial batch,” I said. “I know that number.”

Dolan stood with his back to the door. “You don’t know anything.”

“I founded the company. I signed the ethics charter. T-7-19 was the gene-therapy trial that killed three children.”

He flinched.

Poppy pressed closer to my side. “Mom said don’t trust the guard. She said he is the man who hurt us.”

“Nadia said that?” I asked.

“She said it every night before they took her. She said if I ever saw him, run. But I couldn’t run. He found me at the shelter.”

Dolan’s hand moved toward the compass. I closed it in my fist and slid it into the pocket of my gown. He took one step, then another. The room shrank.

“Elias,” I said. “Look at me.”

He didn’t. He looked at Poppy. That was answer enough.

“You were dead,” I said. “I buried an empty coffin. I gave your eulogy. I funded a fellowship in your name. And you were alive, working security in my own building, dragging your daughter across a gala floor for stealing bread.”

“She is not my daughter,” he said.

Poppy’s head snapped up. “My dad is dead.”

The words landed in the room like a dropped plate. She had been told that, too. Another lie. Another grave.

Dolan-Elias-closed his eyes. “You don’t know what Nadia was.”

“I know what you are,” I said.

He moved fast. I had forgotten how fast he could be when cornered. He grabbed for my pocket. I brought my cane up hard against his forearm. He grunted. Poppy screamed. The door handle rattled from the outside.

“Mrs. Calder?” a security voice called. “Is everything all right?”

Elias’s hand clamped over Poppy’s mouth.

I had spent my life managing rooms, boards, donors, newspapers. But I had never hated anyone the way I hated my son in that moment.

“Let her go,” I said.

“Give me the compass,” he whispered. “Then I disappear. Nadia goes free. Poppy goes to a foster home that won’t ask questions. Everyone lives.”

“You call that living?”

His eyes were wet and wild. “It’s the only life I have.”

I heard the lock click again. This time, he had turned it from the inside. We were alone with him.