The PO Box

The woman in the window didn't move. She just stared out into the darkness, her face a pale oval against the black glass. She didn't see me. I was fifty yards away, hidden in the shadows of a pine tree, a ghost watching a ghost.

My breath fogged in the cold air.

It was impossible.

I had planned her funeral. I had chosen the music. I had stood by the open grave while the priest said the words.

But the woman in the window was Margaret Hawthorne.

I raised my phone to take a picture, then remembered Miller had taken it.

"Damn it," I whispered.

I needed proof. Without proof, I was just a hysterical woman who had broken into a private facility in the middle of the night.

I turned away from the fence and ran back to the car.

I didn't go home. I drove to the one place Arthur wouldn't think to look.

The diner where I had set up my war room was a fluorescent-lit box of grease and misery called *The 24-Hour Spot*. It smelled of burnt coffee and floor cleaner.

I ordered a black coffee and opened my burner laptop.

I needed to find the money trail. Not the payments *to* H.B. Consulting, but the payments *from* it.

I logged into the dark web forum where I had bought the PI tools. I typed in the routing number from the H.B. invoices.

*Searching...*

The screen flickered.

*Match Found.*

The routing number was linked to a PO Box in a strip mall three towns over. The box was registered to an LLC called *Phoenix Management*.

I opened a new tab. I searched for *Phoenix Management LLC*.

The registered agent was listed as *A. Thorne, MD*.

Dr. Aris Thorne.

The doctor who signed the death certificate. The man who had looked me in the eye and told me Margaret’s heart had simply stopped.

I felt a surge of rage so pure it made my hands shake.

He wasn't retired. He was on the payroll.

I pulled up his current address. He had sold his practice and his house in Greenwich six months after the funeral.

Now he lived in a gated community in Florida.

But the PO Box was still active.

I checked the renewal date. It had been renewed last month.

By credit card.

I ran the card number. It was a corporate card. Issued to *Hawthorne Construction*.

Authorized by *EHawthorne_CFO*.

I closed the laptop.

I wasn't just paying for Margaret’s prison. I was paying the salary of the man who put her there.

I looked out the window of the diner. A police car cruised by slowly.

I wasn't safe here.

But I knew where to go next.

I paid for my coffee with cash and walked out into the cold night.

The registered agent for the LLC wasn't a lawyer. It was the doctor who had signed the death certificate.