I didn’t reach for the briefcase with the deed in it. I reached into my coat pocket and took out a small black remote, and I pressed the button.

With a deep mechanical rumble, the heavy sliding mahogany doors between the living room and the dining room rolled apart.

The dining room was not dark.

It was fully lit, and seated around my mother’s pristine antique table were four people. Two uniformed officers, radios murmuring at their shoulders. A sharp-eyed woman in a tailored navy suit — Agent Miller, FBI Financial Crimes.

And a severe man with an open tablet: the chief investigator for the State Medical Board.

The color went out of my mother’s face so fast she looked translucent. Thorne stumbled back like he’d been struck and collided with one of his own orderlies.