He died foaming at the mouth on a hospital floor.
The badge was real.
The scrubs were real.
The order authorizing access to Leah’s room had come through a police channel Keane controlled.
Frank walked into Leah’s room afterward shaking with rage.
“This is done,” he said. “You hear me? You are done with these people. The second they discharge you, I’m taking you home, and if that man ever comes within a hundred feet of you again—”
“Dad,” Leah said weakly, “I am currently attached to five machines. You’re not scaring anybody with hypothetical boundaries.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He stared at her.
Leah’s face had gone thinner in the hospital. Bruises bloomed yellow beneath her skin. There were shadows under her eyes, and pain pressed against every movement she made. But her voice remained steady.
“They came here because I saw something,” she said.
Frank frowned. “What?”
She closed her eyes, thinking back through the shattered noise of the party, the muzzle flash, the panic, the blur.
Then it returned.
A phrase.
Not from the shooting itself. From earlier, while the cake was being wheeled out.
She had been near the service path, helping Sophie keep frosting off her dress, when two men passed beyond the hedge. One of them had said, “After the candles, Mercer wants the father alive if possible.”
At the time, Leah had thought nothing of it. Staff said strange things around rich people’s events. But now—
“They didn’t just want Sophie dead,” Leah said.
Frank went still.
