Chapter 5

Vivian fired Hector by email at 8:12 the next morning. He forwarded it to me with one line: "Guess I hit a nerve."

Then my bank card declined at the gas station. So did the estate account Marisol used for expert fees. Vivian hadn't frozen my personal account-she couldn't-but she controlled the Rourke Marine credit union and the estate's interim accounts. She was trying to starve the case.

Hector showed up at my house with rain in his beard and a cardboard box. "They cleaned out my locker. Told me to be off company property in ten minutes. But they forgot I've been fixing their office air conditioners for fifteen years."

He opened the box. Old invoices, work orders, and a manila folder labeled BILLING-ARCHIVE 1992.

"Where did you get this?"

"Maintenance closet. Wade was supposed to shred it. I saw the label and figured Vivian Rourke's 1992 trash might be worth something."

We spread the papers across my kitchen table while Micah napped in the next room. Most were boring: fuel purchases, crane repairs, payroll. Then I found it. A billing entry from August 1992: ROURKE, V. & D. - ADOPTION SERVICES FEE - BRIGHT HORIZONS - $45,000. PAID IN FULL.

Beside it was a memo from the family lawyer: "Confirm deletion of all references to Mateo Delgado from intake file. Do not retain carbon copies."

Hector whistled low. "Forty-five grand for a baby in 1992. That's not an adoption fee. That's a purchase price."

I copied every page with my phone and sent them to Marisol. Then I called Deputy Ruiz. She asked me to bring the originals in. Hector drove. On the way, Vivian called me from a number I didn't recognize.

"You're making a mistake," she said. Her voice was ice. "Hector will never work in this town again. Marisol will be disbarred for ethics violations. And you will lose Micah."

"You already lost," I said. "You just haven't been handcuffed yet."

She hung up.

That night, Marisol filed an emergency motion for a criminal-evidence protective order and an accounting of all Rourke family trusts. In the filing, she attached the 1992 invoice. By morning, the story was on the local news: ROURKE FAMILY BUSINESS LINKED TO MISSING-CHILD DNA MATCH.

Vivian's response was swift. She held a press conference at the shipyard and called me a grieving widow manipulated by greedy lawyers. She said the invoice was a donation to a charity. She said Mateo Delgado was a coincidence.

But she wouldn't take a cheek swab on camera. And when a reporter asked why she had insisted on using Caleb's old blood card instead of her own DNA, Vivian walked off the stage.

That was when Doyle called me.