Rain, slick asphalt, a car coming the wrong way, a hard swerve to avoid it.

The police report, the weather logs, the damage to the vehicle — all of it agreed.

No one had run Garrett off the road.

No one had needed to.

That was the chilling part, in the end, the part that has stayed with me: there was no dramatic murder to uncover.

Someone had simply looked at a genuine tragedy — a man in a coma, fighting for his life — and seen, in his helplessness, an opportunity.

And they had used the weeks he lay unconscious to breach the portals, alter the files, and paper over the theft.