By the time I reached the third-floor apartment in Baltimore, my feet were aching from blisters and my mind was completely exhausted.

By Sunday morning, the news of what happened at the apartment had spread through the extended Vance family like a wildfire through dry brush.

My phone had received forty-two missed calls and over a hundred text messages from uncles, aunts, cousins, and distant relatives who had spent years ignoring Liam and me. Some messages were pleading; others were demanding; a few were outright threats warning me that "destroying the family reputation" would have consequences.

I didn't answer a single one.

Instead, Valerie and I spent Sunday inside the high-tech offices of Bennett, Vance & Sterling, sitting across a broad oak table with two former FBI digital forensics investigators whom Valerie kept on retainer.

"Mason Vance is panicking," reported Ray, the lead investigator, tapping a key on his laptop. A screen projected onto the wall showed a real-time log of bank account activity, legal entity filings, and location telemetry. "Following the scene at your apartment on Friday afternoon, Mason made seven calls to a criminal defense attorney in Annapolis. He also attempted to liquidate the assets of the Towson wellness clinic at six o'clock yesterday morning."

"Attempted?" I asked.

"Valerie’s team had already filed an emergency ex parte injunction frozen asset order with the state court at five-fifteen," Ray chuckled, taking a sip of coffee. "Mason walked into his bank in Towson at eight-thirty AM on Saturday trying to wire eight hundred thousand dollars to an account in the Cayman Islands. The teller handed him a freeze notice. He threw a fit in the lobby, slammed his fist through a acrylic partition, and was escorted out by security."

I leaned back in my chair, feeling a cold sensation of satisfaction. "What about Gertrude?"

"Gertrude spent yesterday moving furniture out of her suburban home into a rental storage unit," Valerie replied, opening a secondary file. "She realizes that if we enforce the clawback clause on the four hundred and twelve thousand dollar mortgage note Liam paid off for her, her primary residence will go directly to auction. She’s trying to hide physical assets."

"Let her sweat," I said quietly. "Every move they make right now is proving their guilt."

Ray adjusted his glasses. "Mrs. Vance, we also monitored Mason's cellular location data—which we were legally granted access to via the estate's corporate account, since the phone is owned by Vance Architectural Dynamics. Guess where Mason went at two o'clock this morning?"

"Where?"

"The storage facility behind the Towson wellness clinic," Ray said, displaying a high-resolution satellite map with a flashing red dot. "He stayed inside unit 204 for nearly forty minutes. Our drive-by surveillance team captured video of him loading four heavy plastic bins into the trunk of his SUV."

I leaned forward, my heart beating faster. "What was in those bins?"

"Chemical precursors, old manufacturing logs, and unopened batches of the custom supplement capsules," Ray said. "He thinks he's cleaning up the crime scene. He thinks that if he destroys the physical inventory at the clinic, we won't be able to prove direct link between the Thallium and his manufacturing facility."

"Little does he know," Valerie added, sliding a document across the table to me, "that Apex Forensic Labs already sent a team under court order—accompanied by state health inspectors—to the Towson facility three days ago. They took twenty-four environmental swabs, air samples, and raw chemical residue samples from his mixing vats. They found heavy Thallium dust on the exhaust hoods above his encapsulation machine."

I closed my eyes for a brief moment, breathing in slowly.

It was incredible. Liam had anticipated every single move Mason would make. He knew Mason would try to steal his estate first; he knew Mason would try to liquidate his accounts second; and he knew Mason would try to destroy the evidence third.

Every action Mason took was stepping directly into a footprint Liam had marked out weeks before his death.

"He's driving himself straight into a trap," I whispered.

"No," Valerie corrected smoothly. "He's driving himself straight to a federal indictment. But tomorrow morning, when we open safe deposit box 40821, we need to ensure that Mason doesn't try to flee the country before the warrants are issued."

"How do we keep him here?" I asked.