Victoria woke to the smell of coffee.
She opened her eyes. The basement was dark except for the glow of the laptop screen. Nathaniel sat at the table, a mug in his hand, staring at something on the display.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"Six in the morning. Margaret left coffee and pastries at the top of the stairs."
Victoria sat up. Her neck ached from sleeping on the thin pillow. She ran a hand through her hair, which had begun to feel like it belonged to someone else.
"You found something," she said. It wasn't a question.
Nathaniel turned the laptop toward her. On the screen was a personnel file from Meridian Group. A photograph of a woman in her late thirties, dark hair, sharp features, a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Her name is Nora Vance," Nathaniel said. "She worked in finance. Hired six years ago. Quit three years ago—two months before Richard died."
"The woman he had an affair with?"
"I'm almost certain. I found old emails between them. Nothing explicit, but the tone... they were close. Too close for a CFO and a junior analyst."
Victoria pulled the laptop closer. She read the emails. Short. Coded. Arrangements to meet after work. A reference to "keeping things quiet."
"Where is she now?"
"That's the problem. I can't find her. No social media. No address. No employment history after Meridian. It's like she disappeared."
"Or someone made her disappear."
Nathaniel's jaw tightened. "That's what I'm afraid of."
Victoria opened a new browser window and started searching. Nora Vance. No results. Nora Vance Meridian. Nothing. Nora Vance LinkedIn. Deleted.
"She scrubbed herself," Victoria said. "Or someone scrubbed her for her."
"Can Diana find her?"
"Maybe. But we can't call Diana. She said emergency only."
"This is an emergency."
Victoria looked at the burner phone on the table. It hadn't buzzed once since Diana left.
"Give her until noon," Victoria said. "Then we call."
---
The morning passed slowly.
Victoria worked on the timeline, adding Nora Vance's name to the list of people connected to Richard Chan. Nathaniel paced the basement floor, restless, checking the window that faced the alley every few minutes.
Margaret knocked twice at nine. Victoria went upstairs and found a tray with scrambled eggs, toast, and more coffee. She carried it down.
"You're going to wear a hole in the floor," Victoria said, setting the tray on the table.
Nathaniel stopped pacing. "I don't like waiting."
"No one does."
"I should be out there. Talking to people. Following leads. Not sitting in a basement."
"You should be dead. But you're not. Because you're sitting in a basement."
He looked at her. His expression was unreadable, but something flickered behind his eyes.
"You're very practical," he said.
"Someone has to be."
He sat down across from her. They ate in silence. The eggs were good. The coffee was better.
"Nathaniel," Victoria said after a while. "The affair. How did you find out about it?"
"Richard told me. Near the end. He was drinking—more than usual. He said he'd made a mistake. That he'd trusted someone he shouldn't have. I thought he was talking about Nora. Now I think he was talking about something bigger."
"Project Chimera."
"Maybe. Or something else. Richard was good at keeping secrets."
Victoria set down her fork. "If Nora Vance is still alive, she might have answers."
"If she's still alive."
"We have to assume she is. Otherwise, we have nothing."
Nathaniel nodded slowly. "Then we find her."
---
At 11:47 AM, the burner phone buzzed.
Victoria grabbed it. The screen showed Diana's number.
"Go ahead," Victoria said.
"Rhodes set the meeting," Diana said. "Tomorrow, 10 AM. Olivia Park agreed to talk. She's scared. That's good."
"Did you find anything on Nora Vance?"
A pause. "How do you know that name?"
"Richard Chan's affair. Nathaniel remembered. We think she might know something about his death."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Stay where you are," Diana said. "I'm coming to you. Don't talk to anyone. Don't open the door."
The line went dead.
Victoria looked at Nathaniel. "She's coming here."
"That's not good."
"No. It's not."
---
Diana arrived twenty minutes later.
She came down the basement stairs without knocking, her face set in hard lines. She closed the door behind her and locked it.
"Nora Vance," Diana said. "Where did you get that name?"
"Personnel files," Nathaniel said. "She worked for Richard. They had an affair. She quit two months before he died."
Diana pulled out her tablet and began scrolling. "I ran the name after you texted me. Nora Vance doesn't exist. Not anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean the woman in that personnel file is dead. Car accident. Three years ago. Two weeks after Richard Chan's funeral."
Victoria felt the blood drain from her face. "Accident?"
"Single car. Ran off the road. No witnesses. No skid marks. Police ruled it a mechanical failure, but the car was less than a year old."
"She was murdered," Nathaniel said.
"That's my guess. Same as Richard. Same playbook. Make it look like an accident, and no one asks questions."
Victoria sat down. Her legs felt weak.
"She knew something," Victoria said. "Something that could have exposed them. So they killed her."
"Or she was part of it," Diana said. "And they killed her because she became a liability."
Nathaniel stood by the window, his back to them. "We need to find out what she knew."
"She's dead," Diana said. "Dead people don't talk."
"No. But her records might. Her phone. Her computer. Her apartment. She had to leave something behind."
Diana nodded slowly. "I can make some calls. But it'll take time."
"We don't have time," Victoria said.
"Then make time." Diana looked at her watch. "Rhodes is meeting Olivia Park tomorrow. If she folds, we might not need Nora Vance. Park can give us Webb directly."
"And if she doesn't fold?"
"Then we're back to square one."
---
The afternoon stretched into evening.
Diana left to make calls. Victoria and Nathaniel stayed in the basement, waiting.
Victoria couldn't focus on the laptop anymore. She kept thinking about Nora Vance. A woman who had loved Richard Chan—or used him—and ended up dead on a rural road. No witnesses. No justice.
"Nathaniel," she said.
He looked up from his phone.
"Do you think Richard killed himself?"
The question hung in the air.
"No," Nathaniel said. "Richard loved his family. He loved his life. He wouldn't have done that."
"But he knew he was going to die. He said so in the video."
"Knowing you're going to die and killing yourself are different things. Richard was a fighter. He would have fought."
"Then why didn't he go to the police? Why didn't he go to the press?"
Nathaniel was quiet for a moment. "Because he was scared. Not for himself. For his family. For Elena. For the kids."
Victoria thought about Elena Chan. The widow in Scarsdale. The woman who had lost her husband and didn't know why.
"She deserves the truth," Victoria said.
"She'll get it. When this is over."
"And if it's never over?"
Nathaniel walked to the table and sat across from her. His eyes were tired, but they held something else. Something soft.
"Then we keep fighting," he said. "That's all any of us can do."
Victoria looked at him. Really looked. The man who had destroyed her father's company. The man who had walked past her in the hallway. The man who had brought her coffee, black, no sugar.
"You're not who I thought you were," she said.
"Who did you think I was?"
"A monster."
"And now?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't. Because the truth was too complicated, and she didn't have words for
it yet.
Instead, she reached across the table and took his hand.
His fingers were warm. His palm was rough.
He didn't pull away.
"We should sleep," she said quietly.
"We should."
Neither of them moved.