But I had already decided.
Whatever my sister left behind, I was going to see it.
And nothing, not grief, not guilt, not family, was going to stop me from walking straight into the truth.
Pulling away from the funeral home parking lot, I kept one hand tight on the steering wheel while the other hovered near my phone, waiting for any sudden message from Grant. The streets were mostly empty, the kind of quiet that made every stoplight feel like a spotlight on the wrong person. I wasn’t paranoid by nature, but years in the military had trained me to assume people watched when they shouldn’t.
Today, that instinct didn’t feel dramatic.
It felt necessary.
I drove around the block twice before pulling into the staff lot behind Grant’s building. He wasn’t outside, which instantly annoyed me. If a man was going to ask someone to sneak around like a criminal after a funeral, he should at least be punctual.
I stepped out of the vehicle, locked it, and scanned the alley. A security camera blinked above the door.
Good.
If anything happened, at least there’d be footage proving I wasn’t wandering around talking to myself.
The door finally cracked open and Grant stepped out. He looked older than he did at the funeral, like he’d aged five years in ninety minutes. His suit jacket was off, his tie loosened, and he held a thick folder under one arm. He wasn’t the corporate type anymore. He looked like a man who’d been staring at something he didn’t want to see.
“Over here,” he said, ushering me inside with the urgency of someone trying to hide a fugitive.
The staff hallway was narrow and smelled like stale coffee and cleaning chemicals. He didn’t stop until we were halfway down, where he swiped his badge on a side door and held it open for me.
“Why aren’t we in your office?” I asked.
“Because I don’t want anyone watching us go in,” he said. “My office has windows. This one doesn’t.”
The room he picked looked like an unused conference space. Dim lights. Metal chairs. One long table. No decor. Perfect for a conversation that shouldn’t exist.
He set the folder on the table, but didn’t open it. Instead, he looked at me like he wasn’t sure if I was ready, or if he was.
“Laura,” he said quietly, “your sister was working on something she didn’t want anyone in your family to know about.”
The sentence felt rehearsed, like he’d gone over it in his head too many times.
I kept my tone neutral.
“She told you that?”
“She implied it repeatedly.”
I waited.
Soldiers learn early that silence makes people keep talking.
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