The kitchen smelled like garlic and butter.
A man stood at the stove in a dress shirt and black tie, his suit jacket draped over a chair at the kitchen island. He stirred a pan of shrimp scampi with one hand and gestured with the other, conducting an invisible orchestra.
On the TV in the living room, Little Shop of Horrors was playing. Seymour was on screen, cradling a potted plant, singing with desperate tenderness.
The man sang along.
"Grow for me..."
He spun away from the stove, arms wide, dancing across the kitchen tile in his socks. He wasn't a good dancer. That didn't seem to bother him.
"Oh, oh, oh, please, grow for me..."
On the kitchen counter, next to a cutting board and a glass of white wine, sat a Guy Fawkes mask. Pale face. Thin smile. Pointed beard. It watched him dance with its painted eyes.
He twirled back to the stove, checked the shrimp, and kept singing.
His face was never shown.
* *
McGee sat on her couch with papers spread across the coffee table and her lap. The tea on the side table had gone cold hours ago.
She shuffled through the files — Kane's financial records, Walker's corporate history, background checks, timelines. She was looking for a thread. Anything.
College? She checked. Kane went to Wharton. Walker went to Northwestern. Different years, different schools. No overlap.
Friends? She pulled up social pages, event photos, charity boards. Nothing. No pictures of them together. No mutual friends she could find.
She leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
They didn't go to college together. For all intents and purposes, the only time they'd ever been in the same orbit was galas and fundraisers — the kind of events where rich people stood in the same room and pretended to care about the same causes. They might have been in the same room once. There was no way to know. No pictures. No proof.
So it wasn't personal.
McGee sat up and pulled the files closer.
If it wasn't personal, it was about what they did*.
Kane: hedge fund manager. Ponzi scheme. Millions and millions of dollars — gone. People's retirement funds, college savings, life savings. Vanished into his pockets. Lives ruined.
Walker: CEO of Meridian Health Insurance. Denied claims. Constantly. Sick people begging for treatment, and her company said no, over and over, while the profits climbed. People suffered. People died.
McGee stared at the two files side by side.
They were both people who made other people's lives miserable by their actions. Not by accident — by choice. By design. They had power, and they used it to hurt people who couldn't fight back.
She picked up her cold tea and drank it anyway.
He wasn't picking victims. He was picking targets.
The SEC had investigated Kane. Regulators had fined Walker's company. Nobody had stopped them. The system had known — and done nothing. Her father had spent thirty years believing it worked. She was starting to wonder.
* * *
The rain had started earlier. Not a downpour — just a drizzle, the kind that hung in the air like mist, turning the streetlights into halos.
A man walked down the empty sidewalk in a dark suit. His tie was straight. His shoes clicked softly on the wet pavement.
He was humming.
"Oh, oh, oh, please, grow for me..."
He stopped in front of a brownstone. Looked up at the windows — warm light behind curtains. He straightened his tie, smoothed his jacket, and walked up the steps.
He knocked.
The door slowly opened, revealing a hallway lit dim and gold. An older man stood in the doorway in a clerical collar, his face lined with age and surprise.
"Hello, Archbishop Daniels," the man in the suit said pleasantly. "It is a pleasure to meet you."
Chapter 9