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Sheriff Thomas Vance stared at the dark phone in Marcus’s palm, his jaw working as if chewing gravel.

"Dwight Miller wouldn't run that paper without a seal," Vance muttered, his voice sounding older than his sixty years, strained through teeth worn flat by decades of backroom compromises. "He’s a political animal, Marcus. He knows what happens to an unbacked deputy if the state steps in. If he’s on your mother’s porch with an evidence case, Hoyt got Eubanks to ink an emergency preservation writ under civil code twenty-two."

"A civil preservation writ doesn't authorize forced entry into a private residence without twenty-four hours’ service," Marcus said. His voice was too quiet, the terrifying calm of an engine spinning under maximum load without an exhaust vent.

"It does if Harlan Thorne filed an affidavit alleging spoliation," Vance countered, his heavy fingers tapping against the brim of the Stetson he still carried in his left hand. "All Thorne has to do is swear before the magistrate that you, an active GBI agent with high-tier digital forensics access, were observed using personal mobile devices to manipulate the local cloud node. He tells Eubanks you were actively scrubbing video that could exonerate Deputy Callaway. Eubanks signs an ex-parte order appointing Thorne’s private firm as special masters to take physical possession of all digital storage media on the premises. It’s dirty as ditch water, Marcus. But it’s papered up to the chin."

"They aren't looking for the camera feed, Tom," I said, struggling to push myself higher against the stiff hospital pillows. The thin cotton of my gown pulled across the bruises on my chest. "The camera is an excuse. Marcus, you remember what Arthur kept in the lower right drawer of his roll-top desk? The firebox with the brass latch?"

Marcus turned his head slowly, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "The survey maps from the ninety-eight easement dispute."

"Not just the maps," I told him, each word costing a sharp pinch in my ribs. "The bank records. When Hoyt Callaway bought the old granite pit behind the ridge, he didn't have the capital to meet the state reclamation bond. He formed a blind partnership—Magnolia Ridge Development—and borrowed four hundred thousand dollars through the municipal utility authority using forged residential signatures from this cul-de-sac. Arthur was town treasurer back then. He kept the original transfer ledger with Hoyt's signature and Richard Pratt’s notary stamp. When Arthur refused to certify the road widening through our front yard three years ago, Hoyt told him that ledger belonged to the county. Arthur told him it belonged to the truth."

Vance let out a low, ragged whistle through his mustache. "Good God almighty, Grace. You’ve been sitting on Hoyt Callaway’s bank fraud for twenty-five years?"

"Arthur wasn't a blackmailer, Tom," I replied, the heat rising into my cheeks despite the sterile chill of room four. "Arthur was a cautious man. He said as long as that ledger stayed in our safe, Hoyt would keep his gravel trucks on the state highway and leave this end of the lane alone. But Arthur’s gone now. And Linda Pratt didn't move next door to borrow sugar. She moved there to find out where that ledger was kept."

Marcus reached to the bedside table. His fingers closed around the gold GBI shield, his identification folder, and his encrypted state radio. For a second, I thought he was going to pin the brass back to his breast pocket, to let the weight of the badge carry him through the front door of our home.

Instead, he opened the top drawer of the hospital nightstand, laid the state credentials inside, and slid the drawer shut with a sharp, final click.

"Marcus," Vance warned, his boots shifting on the linoleum. "You go down there without that tin, you’re just an angry son with a legal suspension hanging over his head. Thorne will have a court reporter recording every syllable you spit. You touch Dwight Miller, and Hoyt won't just have you fired; he’ll have you behind bars in the regional jail before the magistrate leaves his supper table."

"Then you’d better drive fast, Sheriff," Marcus said, rolling his cuffs up twice until his thick, corded forearms were bare. "Because I’m not letting two private contractors and a bought deputy rifle through my father’s Bible and his business while my mother is lying in a cardiac ward."

"I'm coming with you," I said, throwing the heavy white blanket off my legs.

"Mama, no," Marcus said, his hands immediately coming down on my shoulders, firm but exquisitely gentle. "Julian said your troponin is elevated. Your heart can't take the road."

"My heart will take whatever the Lord demands of it, Marcus Hammond," I told him, looking square into the face that looked so much like the man I buried three summers ago. "You think I’m going to lay under these fluorescent lights while Linda Pratt’s husband walks through Arthur’s study? That house has my name on the title, not yours. If there’s an ex-parte hearing on that porch, the property owner needs to be standing on the flagstone."

Dr. Julian Vance appeared at the glass door as if summoned by the monitors, his arms crossed over his white lab coat, his face pinched with concern. "Grace, you're at one-sixty over ninety. You pull that IV out, and you risk a rhythm collapse before you hit the county line."

"Give me the portable monitor and two nitro tablets in my purse, Julian," I said, swinging my bare feet onto the cold tile floor. My knees gave a sickening wobble, but Marcus’s arm was instantly under my elbow, an unyielding beam of oak that bore every ounce of my weight without flinching. "I walked into this town in nineteen-ninety-three with my head up. I’m not hiding in a sickbed while Hoyt Callaway steals my husband’s legacy."

Julian looked at his brother, then at Marcus’s unmoving face. The doctor exhaled, a long, weary surrender. "I’ll write a transport waiver under medical supervision. Tom, you take my personal jump kit in the back of your rig. If her systolic goes over two hundred, you turn that car around and bring her straight back to my bay, or I’ll have the coroner certify you both insane."

Ten minutes later, the heavy doors of the Sheriff’s black Tahoe slammed shut against the thick, swampy air of the Georgia twilight.