"Hit submit." Iris leaned over my shoulder, her fingers digging into the fabric of the dining chair.
"Give me a second. I need to make sure the license number clears the state registry." I stared at the glowing laptop screen, my fingers hovering over the keyboard.
The medical examiner's portal demanded a valid dental license. I typed in Dr. Vivienne Adler. My maiden name. The credentials remained active in the state database, untouched by my marriage to Damon Voss.
"If they run a facial recognition scan on your ID..." Iris started, her voice tight.
"They won't." I clicked the mouse, advancing to the next page. "They need an outside odontologist immediately. The local coroner is overwhelmed with the crash fatalities from the interstate pileup. A high-profile case with missing dental records is a liability. They just want a certified expert to sign off."
"What if Damon's lawyers check the expert's name?"
"They only see the final signature on the death certificate," I replied, typing in Iris's address for the mailing contact. "By the time they realize Dr. Adler is investigating, the report will already be filed."
The screen flashed green. Application Accepted. Review Pending.
"Forty-eight hours," I muttered, pushing the laptop away. "Now we wait for the approval."
Forty-eight hours of waiting turned Iris's cramped apartment into a war room.
I hadn't slept. My eyes burned from staring at the harsh glare of the laptop, but the adrenaline kept my hands steady. I dragged a red marker across the corkboard mounted on the living room wall, drawing a thick line between a printed photo of my crushed SUV and a copy of the trust agreement.
"He moved too fast," I told Iris, jabbing a thumbtack into the center of the board. "Damon calculates risk for a living. But he got arrogant here."
Iris handed me a mug of black coffee. "How arrogant?"
"Look at the sequence." I tapped the red line. "The fund collapses at eight. The crash happens at nine. By midnight, he transfers the voting rights to his partner. Three days later, Margot moves into my house and wears my mother's pearls."
"He wanted the money secured before the police even dragged the car out of the ravine."
"Exactly." I took a sip of the bitter coffee. "Normal grieving husbands don't replace their wives in seventy-two hours. They don't process forty-million-dollar trust paperwork while the fire department is still spraying foam on the wreckage. Every step was perfectly choreographed."
"Except the body," Iris pointed out.
"Except the body." I set the mug down and walked back to the laptop.
The county medical examiner's office had approved my application at dawn. They granted my alias temporary access to the secure server, uploading the preliminary imaging of the Jane Doe's jawbone.
I pulled the digital scan up on the monitor. The stark black-and-white contrast of human bone filled the screen.
"Come here," I instructed.
Iris rounded the table and squinted at the screen. "It's just a white blob."
"It's a full ceramic crown on tooth number nineteen," I corrected. I pointed a pen at the glowing monitor. "And it's fresh. Look at the margins around the gum line. There is zero bone recession. The cement layer is perfectly intact. This implant went into her mouth three months ago, tops."
"Are you sure?"
"I do this for a living, Iris. I know what a new crown looks like. The tissue hasn't even fully healed around the base."
I grabbed my own dental file from the coffee table. I pulled out the panoramic X-ray I had smuggled out of my clinic and pinned it to the corkboard, right next to the printed image of the dead woman's scan.
"Ten years ago, I had a root canal on that exact same tooth." I traced the dark, opaque mass on my chart. "It was capped in solid gold. Gold blocks X-rays completely. It shows up as a blinding white square on the film. Ceramic lets radiation pass through, creating this gray, translucent shadow."
I turned to face my sister. A cold, sharp satisfaction settled in my chest. The panic of the ravine felt like a distant memory. I was finally standing on my own territory. I was dismantling his perfect murder, frame by frame.
"Damon found a blonde woman with my height and my build," I continued, my voice steady. "He dressed her in my coat. He probably even checked if she had dental work on the left side of her mouth to make it look convincing. But he doesn't know the difference between porcelain and gold."
"He's going to prison," Iris whispered, staring at the contrasting X-rays.
"He's going to lose the money first." I pulled the thumbtack out and repositioned my X-ray directly over the crash photo. "Once I submit the official comparison report tomorrow, the coroner will reject the match. The death certificate gets denied. The forty million stays frozen."
"What happens when Damon finds out the body got flagged?"
"He panics. He starts making mistakes." I crossed my arms. "He thinks he holds all the cards because he controls the narrative. But he doesn't control the science."
"Vivienne." Iris pointed at the coffee table. "Your phone."
I followed her gaze.
My old cell phone, the burner I kept hidden in my clinic desk for emergencies, sat next to the empty coffee mugs. It had been dead for days. I had just plugged it into the wall charger an hour ago to pull up my old contact list.
The screen glowed brightly in the dim room.
I walked over and picked it up.
A single text notification rested on the lock screen. The sender was a blocked number, but I recognized the digits immediately. Damon's private line.
I swiped the screen open.
The message contained one sentence.
"Funeral on Thursday. Coming to send you off one last time."
