Chapter 9: The Still

The reporter's name was on the byline, so I walked into her office at four that afternoon and sat down uninvited.

It was a glass cube on the fourth floor of a Midtown building, with a ring light and a sticky note that said POST FASTER.

She was thirty, tired, and typing.

"You can't be in here," she said.

"You posted my medical photo."

"A source sent it. It's newsworthy."

"A source with hospital security footage," I said. "From my room, from the night I lost my child."

She stopped typing.

I took Rhona's phone out of my bag and set it on her desk.

"Press play."

She hesitated, then pressed.

It was the clerk's voice, thin and scared, and then the burner texts.

The reporter read them with her lips slightly parted.

"That's my forged lab report," I said. "That's the woman who paid for it."

"Do you want to guess whose phone number is on the bottom?"

She did not answer, and she did not need to.

"I have the original result, too," I said. "It says Talbot Berrien is the father."

"Are you going to sue us?"

"I'm going to give you a better story."

I slid the Goodwill receipt over next to the phone.

"The man who typed the zero. The woman who paid him. And whoever pulled my security footage."

She swallowed.

"I don't know who pulled it."

"You know who sent it."

"The email came from a throwaway address," she said. "But there was a cover letter attached."

"What did it say?"

"A records release request, on letterhead. From the Trezevant Family Office."

I felt something cold touch the back of my neck.

"Camille doesn't work for the family office," I said.

"No," the reporter said slowly. "But somebody with a key does."

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