Laurence had left in a rage.
On his way out he slammed the door of the hospital room.
When the nurse came in to change my dressing, she asked under her breath, "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
She looked at the shredded paper on the floor and sighed. "So rich people are like this too."
I didn't answer.
At half past nine that night I changed back into my own clothes and slipped out the back door of the hospital.
Owen's car was waiting at the mouth of the alley.
He handed me a hat.
"Someone's following you."
I slid into the back seat. "Laurence's people?"
"Not only them."
My heart jumped.
"Who else?"
Owen glanced at the rearview mirror. "The lady's people."
I gripped the seatbelt.
"You know my mother?"
He was quiet for a few seconds.
"I owe her a debt."
The car turned into the old downtown district.
Half of the old fish market on the south side of Baltimore had already been torn down, and the sheet-metal barriers were plastered with For Lease ads.
The rain was coming down hard.
When I pushed the door open, my shoe sank into a puddle.
The familiar fishy smell had faded to almost nothing.
Even so, it dragged me straight back to that night when I was fifteen.
My mother had pressed a silver fish-scale clasp into my palm.
She said, "Evie, if I don't come back, go find the person who wears a black pearl earring stud."
Over the years I'd seen plenty of people with earring studs.
Not one of them had ever matched.
Owen led me around to the back door of the warehouse.
A single lamp was burning inside.
A middle-aged man sat on a battered wooden crate, a black pearl on his left earlobe.
I stood in the doorway, my legs unsteady.
The man looked up at me.
"Miss."
The single word landed hard, and my throat closed up.
"Where's my mother?"
He stood. "The lady can't show herself yet."
"Why not?"
"There was infighting in the Henson family back then, and the lady was being hunted. She hid you to keep you alive."
I let out a short laugh.
"Twenty years of staying alive?"
The man lowered his head. "The lady lost her memory for a while. It only came back last year. She's been looking for you ever since."
I stared at him.
True or false, it all sounded like a joke.
"Where's your proof?"
He handed me a document envelope.
Inside were a paternity test, old photographs, and a share-holding proxy agreement.
In the photo, my mother, young, in a black suit, held a swaddled infant in her arms.
She was not a woman who sold fish at a market.
On the back of the photo was a single line.
Monica Henson and her daughter, Evelyn Henson. Taken at the one-month celebration.
Evelyn Henson.
So my surname had been Henson all along.
I held the photo, my fingers going cold.
"Do the Gilberts know?"
The man said nothing.
A cramp twisted through my stomach.
"Tell me."
"The Gilbert matriarch may know."
My head snapped up.
"What do you mean?"
"The last person the lady saw before she disappeared was the old Mrs. Gilbert."
Headlights swept across the wall outside the warehouse.
Owen said in a low voice, "Someone's here."
The man pushed a flash drive into my hand.
"Inside is the evidence of how the Gilberts swallowed the Henson assets back then. Miss, you have to get out of here alive first."
Before I could say a word, the door was kicked open.
Laurence stood in the rain, several bodyguards behind him.
His gaze dropped to the document envelope in my hand.
"Evelyn."
He walked in, step by step. "So you really are digging into the Gilberts."
I slid the photo into my bag.
"You followed me?"
"If I hadn't followed you, I never would've known you were sneaking around, conspiring with outsiders behind my back."
He looked at Owen and the man, his eyes like knives.
"Hand it over."
I took half a step back.
Laurence's voice went cold. "Evelyn, don't push me."
"Laurence, what are you afraid of?"
His face stiffened.
I gripped the flash drive. "Afraid I'll find out my mother's disappearance had something to do with the Gilberts?"
The rain hammered down inside the warehouse, grating on the nerves.
Something blank flickered in Laurence's eyes.
He didn't know.
At least in that moment, he didn't look like he knew.
But he recovered his cold detachment fast.
"What you should be worried about right now is tomorrow's statement."
"And if I don't go?"
Laurence stepped closer, his voice dropping low enough that only I could hear.
"Then I'll dig up that fish-selling mother of yours and let the whole city know Evelyn Fox is an orphan nobody ever wanted."
I raised my hand and slapped him.
A crisp crack.
Even the rain seemed to stop.
Laurence turned his face aside, running his tongue along the inside of his cheek.
He smiled.
"Good."
The next second, a bodyguard rushed forward and pinned my shoulder.
The flash drive was torn from my hand.
As I struggled, the small of my back struck the corner of the crate, and the pain blacked out my vision.
Laurence held the flash drive, his eyes ice-cold.
"Nine o'clock tomorrow morning. You go to the police station."
I glared at him through gritted teeth.
He leaned down and tucked my loose hair behind my ear.
The gesture was so intimate it made me sick.
"Otherwise, Evelyn, I'll make sure you don't even get the chance to regret it."
