“Are you required to report it?”
“Given the substance, the dose, a minor — yes. Henrico PD’s already notified. A detective’s coming today.”
I didn’t cry. Michael looked at me the way you look at someone you’ve decided, in that exact second, you’re a little afraid of.
At eight, before the detective even arrived, my phone rang. Priya Chandran — the forensic accountant I’d quietly hired three months earlier after my family stonewalled me one time too many.
No hello.
“Allison, someone broke into my car last night. My laptop bag’s gone. The physical backups I kept separate on purpose — gone too.”
My stomach fell through the floor.
“When?”
“Six to nine p.m. I was at my daughter’s soccer practice. Nobody knew I had those files except you and me.”
I thought of Vanessa’s hands on that bottle.
Not the folder. The dispenser. But someone had known enough to hit Priya’s car the exact night my daughter went down at a party my sister had personally staffed.
