Chapter 9 - The Signature Anna Never Gave
Mr. Cho had kept a photograph of the meeting minutes because something about them bothered him. He sent it before sunrise.
ANNA HART - APPROVED appeared at the bottom beside an electronic signature. Under it was an instruction to remove the staff gate from the event safety plan.
Anna had spent that entire week in a hospital room. I knew because I had slept in the visitor chair with Lily's baby pictures spread across my phone. Anna couldn't even hold a pen without coughing.
The document might have been a misfiled electronic vote. I wanted to be fair about that. But it matched the exact language on my own approval: access risk accepted.
Grace read it over my shoulder. "Anna fought to keep that gate shut. Someone made it look like she agreed to open it."
"Why?"
"Maybe because fixing it cost more than a donor dinner."
Nora met me at a coffee shop halfway between our homes. She was wearing dry jeans and had a bandage on one wrist from scraping it against the pool wall.
"I heard what Lily said," she told me. "Thank you for correcting the video."
"It's nowhere near enough."
"No. It isn't."
I handed her the maintenance records. Her expression tightened when she saw the invoices. "These aren't gate repairs. They're party lighting and hospitality charges. Someone moved the money."
"How do you know?"
"Because the supplier on page three sells table linens. Not alarms. I called them when the gate broke last month."
May you like
A delivery truck rumbled outside. Nora waited until it passed, then said, "I have the original safety report in my notebook. I also have the names of the parents who complained before Lily got hurt."
She pulled a folded sheet from her bag. At the top was a name I recognized from an old photograph: BENNETT FAMILY - NEAR MISS, LAST SUMMER.
