THE POOR MECHANIC CLIMBED THE BROKEN ROLLER COASTER TO SAVE THE MAFIA BOSS'S SISTER—THEN HE LEARNED WHY SHE HAD NO ONE TO CALL

The real Tessa Grant was in Portland, Oregon.

Bryce confirmed it at 10:12 the next morning after locating her through a university alumni office. Tessa had not contacted Jolene. She had not changed her number. She had never heard of Lake View Grand.

When Bryce put her on speaker, Jolene went pale.

"I'm so sorry," Tessa said. "I haven't messaged you in forever. I didn't even know you were in Chicago."

Jolene stared at the floor. "Someone knew how you talk."

"My social media is public. Old posts, old messages maybe. Jo, are you okay?"

"I'm alive."

Kieran's hand tightened around the back of the chair beside him.

Tessa heard the change in Jolene's voice. "Is your brother there?"

Jolene almost smiled. "Unfortunately."

Kieran ignored that.

After the call ended, Bryce placed a printed sheet on the table. "The burner number was purchased through an online service. Payment went through a prepaid card, but the account was created from an IP address tied to a coworking space downtown. We're pulling cameras."

Detective Chen sat across from him. "We're pulling cameras."

Bryce nodded. "Of course."

Chen looked unconvinced.

Meredith was not at the meeting.

She was at her apartment discovering someone had been inside.

Nothing obvious was missing at first. Her television remained mounted on the wall. Her laptop was where she left it. The twenty-seven dollars in cash inside a ceramic coffee tin had not moved.

But the drawer beside her bed was open.

Inside it, envelopes had been shifted.

Her father's old employee badge was faceup instead of facedown.

Meredith stood in the doorway without entering farther.

She called Detective Chen.

Then she called building management.

Then, after staring at her phone for several seconds, she did not call anyone else.

There was no one else.

When police arrived, they found no forced entry. The lock showed faint tool marks. Whoever had searched the apartment had known what they were doing.

"What would they want?" Chen asked.

Meredith sat at her kitchen table, arms folded.

"If this is connected to the coaster, maybe the photographs."

"They're in the cloud."

"Yes."

"Anything physical from work?"

Meredith hesitated.

There was one thing.

She went to a cabinet above the refrigerator and removed a dented metal lunchbox that had belonged to her father. Inside were old engineering notes, a handful of photographs, and a folded incident report from seventeen years earlier.

Detective Chen read the company name on the top page.

ORION RIDE SYSTEMS.

"What's this?"

"My father was an engineer. He worked for Orion before he died."

"How?"

Meredith looked at the yellowing report.

"A test platform collapsed at a manufacturing facility in Indiana. Official cause was operator error."

"You don't believe that."

"Neither did he."

Chen's eyes sharpened. "Your father wrote this before the accident?"

"Three weeks before."

The report described irregular actuator responses in a restraint system. Missing fasteners. Maintenance overrides. Management pressure to keep a demonstration schedule.

Chen looked up. "This sounds familiar."

"That's why I kept it."

Meredith had been seventeen when Thomas Lawson died. Her mother survived him by six years, long enough to lose the house, fight insurance companies, and teach Meredith exactly how expensive truth became when a corporation decided it preferred another version.

Meredith had studied mechanical engineering on scholarships, then left university a semester before graduation when her mother got sick. She entered industrial maintenance because she needed money immediately. Years later, she tried to raise questions about Orion equipment at another amusement property and was quietly pushed out.

People called her difficult.

They called her obsessive.

They did not call her wrong.

Detective Chen photographed the old report.

"Did Lake View Grand use Orion components?"

"Some restraint assemblies. The coaster was built by another manufacturer, but Orion supplied retrofit kits six years ago."

Chen was silent.

Meredith understood what she was thinking.

"You think someone broke into my apartment because of something my father wrote seventeen years ago?"

"I think someone searched your apartment less than twelve hours after a sabotaged ride trapped Kieran Ashford's sister. I'm not ruling out anything."

A knock sounded at the door.

Meredith's shoulders tightened.

Chen's partner checked the peephole.

"It's Ashford."

Meredith closed her eyes. "Of course it is."

Kieran entered only after Chen allowed it. He wore a charcoal suit without a tie and looked as if he had not slept.

His gaze took in the open drawers and evidence markers.

"Were you hurt?"

"No."

"You shouldn't stay here tonight."

Meredith almost laughed. "Good morning to you too."

"I'm serious."

"So am I. You don't get to relocate me because your sister was on my roller coaster."

"Your roller coaster was sabotaged, your apartment was searched, and someone deleted a camera after you identified tampering."

"I noticed."

"Then be practical."

"Practical for you means control."

Something in his face changed.

It was small, but she saw it.

He had heard those words before.

Jolene, she guessed.

Kieran lowered his voice. "I have a secure guest apartment in a building with twenty-four-hour staff. No obligation. No guards inside. You can leave whenever you want."

Meredith looked at Chen.

The detective shrugged. "From a safety perspective, he's not wrong. Annoying, but not wrong."

"Thank you," Kieran said.

"That wasn't a compliment."

Meredith rubbed her forehead.

"One night."

Kieran nodded once.

"One night."

Then he noticed the Orion report on the table.

The color left his face so subtly that only someone watching closely would have seen it.

Meredith was watching closely.

"You know that name," she said.