The recipient was saved under a single letter. V. And scrolling up, I found the earlier messages, sent across that same terrible day, each one another brick in the wall of what had truly happened. He’s out of the cold vault. Bring him straight to the private drive. Do not let him go through a major hospital. And, sent that afternoon: We need the certificate signed today. I read them, and my hands began to shake, not with grief now but with a cold and gathering fury, and then I did the thing my whole life had prepared me to do without my knowing it.

I took out my own phone, and I photographed every message, every thread, making certain the dates and the times and the phone numbers were all clearly visible.

Evidence.

Whatever else happened, they were not going to be able to make this disappear.

I did not know, in that hospital chair at four in the morning, photographing a stolen phone, that I was doing the single most important thing I would do in the entire ordeal, but some deep instinct did know, and it drove my shaking hands.

Because I understood, even through the exhaustion and the fury and the residue of grief, one crucial thing about the people I was up against: they were powerful, and they were organized, and they had already demonstrated a willingness to do almost anything.