County Records

I walked through the mudroom door and went straight to the sink, scrubbing the scent of Oak Brook and suburban betrayal off my skin. My movements were sharp, clinical, the rhythmic motion of a forensic accountant preparing for an audit. I didn't let myself feel the hollowness in my chest. If I let the grief in, the structure of my resolve would collapse, and Julian was currently counting on my collapse.

I sat at my desk and pulled up the DuPage County property tax portal. My vision was tunneled, focused entirely on the flickering blue light of the monitor.

"Vance," I whispered, my fingers dancing across the keys.

I typed the name into the owner search field for Whispering Pines. The system whirred, the loading icon a spinning mockingbird.

*No Records Found.*

I tried variations. *Mia Vance. Julian Vance. Arthur Vance.* Each query returned a blank screen, a digital dead end. Julian was too smart for a direct trail. He wouldn't put a mistress’s name on a public deed in a neighborhood where he was the lead architect.

I pivoted. I went back to the master subdivision plan I’d pulled earlier. I located the specific parcel for 116 Whispering Pines and copied the fourteen-digit permanent index number.

Searching by name was a fisherman’s game. Searching by parcel was surgery.

I pasted the index number into the county's direct property search. My pulse thrummed in my fingertips, a dull, heavy beat that matched the ticking of the clock on the wall. Julian was supposedly forty miles away, but I felt him in the room, his hand on my shoulder, his voice telling me I was being paranoid.

The screen flickered, refreshing to show the raw tax data for the modern fortress with the red tricycle on the lawn. I scrolled down to the owner information field, my breath catching in my throat. I expected to see *Oak Management LLC*. I expected to see a shell company linked back to Sterling & Vance.

The page loaded. The owner of the Oak Brook property wasn't Mia Vance. It wasn't Julian Hayes.

The name on the deed, recorded in bold black letters, was Clara Hayes.