Vincent found Angela Pierce at 11:14 p.m.

She had not gone home sick.

She was in a service apartment two floors above the estate's staff quarters — a unit used for visiting contractors, technically unoccupied for the past six weeks.

The door was unlocked.

She was sitting at the small table with a cup of cold coffee and her coat still on, as if she had been deciding for several hours whether to leave.

Vincent called Dominic from the doorway.

"She's here.

She's talking."

Dominic came up alone.

He told Vincent to wait in the corridor.

Angela Pierce was thirty-one.

She had worked in the estate's rehabilitation unit for three years without a single complaint on her record.

She was not shaking.

She was not crying.

She looked like someone who had already passed through the worst of her fear and come out the other side into something quieter and more resolved.

Dominic sat across from her.

"You sent the message."

"Yes."

"From a burner."

"I bought it two weeks ago.

I wasn't sure I was going to use it."

"What changed your mind?"

She looked at her hands.

"They told me the vote was tonight.

I didn't know it was going to be tonight until this afternoon." She looked up.

"I thought I had more time."

"Time for what?"

"To find a way out of this that didn't involve me sitting in this room talking to you."

Dominic said nothing.

He waited.

Angela set both hands flat on the table.

"Three weeks ago, a man came to the rehabilitation unit after hours.

He said he was a specialist consultant brought in by Dr.

Mercer to review your recovery protocol.

He had credentials.

He had a visitor authorization signed by Mercer.

Everything looked correct."

"But."

"He spent forty minutes with your equipment.

I was there for the first ten.

Then I got called to the supply room for an inventory discrepancy — which I now think was arranged.

When I came back, he was gone." She paused.

"Two days later, I noticed the brace had been adjusted.

I thought one of the other technicians had done it.

I corrected it."

Dominic's eyes sharpened.

"You corrected it."

"I put the retaining plate back to the correct position." Her voice stayed level.

"The next morning it was wrong again.

That's when I understood."

"Someone was resetting it."

"Every time I fixed it, it was reversed again within twenty-four hours.

I documented it.

I took photographs on my personal phone.

I didn't know who to go to because the authorization had Mercer's signature on it and Mercer is —" She stopped.

"Say it."

"Mercer is the one who hired me.

And Mercer's name is on that transfer document.

I saw it two days ago when a copy was left in the unit printer by mistake." She reached into her coat pocket and placed a folded sheet of paper on the table.

"I kept it."

Dominic unfolded it.

It was a draft version of page nine — dated four days earlier, with a handwritten note in the margin.

Three words, in handwriting he didn't recognize.

*After the vote.*

He looked at her.

"Who wrote this?"

"I don't know.

But the man who came to adjust the brace — the consultant — I've seen him twice since then.

Both times he was in the east corridor near Arthur Voss's private office."

The room was very quiet.

"Why didn't you come to me directly?"

Angela Pierce looked at him steadily.

"Because I'm a rehabilitation technician in a building full of men who have been with you for fifteen years.

Because the last person who raised a concern about something in this organization — a woman in the shipping office, two years ago — was transferred to a facility in Milwaukee within a week and I never heard her name again." She paused.

"Because I needed you to find the brace first.

I needed you to already know something was wrong before I became the person saying it."

Dominic was quiet for a moment.

"The photographs."

She unlocked her phone and slid it across the table.

Twelve photographs.

Timestamped.

Clear.

The brace in correct position.

The brace reversed.

The brace corrected again.

The brace reversed again.

A four-week record of deliberate, repeated interference.

Dominic looked at each one.

"Vincent is going to take copies of these."

"I know."

"You'll need to give a full account.

Everything you just told me, in writing, with dates."

"I know that too."

He stood.

She didn't move.

"One more question," Dominic said.

"The consultant who came to the unit.

You said you've seen him near Arthur's office."

"Yes."

"Could you identify him?"

Angela Pierce reached back into her coat pocket and placed a second folded sheet on the table.

A printed photograph, slightly blurred, taken from what looked like a hallway security camera.

A man in a grey technician's uniform, face partially turned.

"I printed it from the unit's internal camera before I came up here," she said.

"I wasn't sure you'd have access to that feed."

Dominic picked up the photograph.

He recognized the face.

It was not someone from Arthur's circle.

It was not a contractor or a consultant or a stranger.

It was the man who had delivered Dominic's rehabilitation schedule every morning for the past six weeks — a quiet, efficient, unremarkable man named Paul Derry, who worked directly under Gerald Fitch.

The council member who had been watching Dominic through the glass all evening.

The one with both hands flat on the table.

The one who had not looked at Arthur.