5. Tobias and the Tribunal

The highway to Ashford unspooled before Nora like a ribbon of ink, the white lines flashing past in hypnotic rhythm. She drove with both hands gripping the wheel, her knuckles pale against the black leather, her eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the reach of her headlights. The radio was off. She could not bear the sound of voices, the cheerful chatter of late-night DJs, the advertisements for furniture sales and car dealerships. The world outside this car was going about its business as if nothing had changed, as if her son had not been stolen, as if a woman across the street had not spent years perfecting the art of destruction.

She thought about Matty. Not about where he might be or what might be happening to him, because those thoughts led to a darkness she was not ready to enter. Instead, she thought about him at six years old, standing on a skateboard for the first time, his face split by a grin so wide it seemed to crack his whole head open. She thought about him at twelve, building his first computer from scavenged parts, his fingers moving with a precision that seemed almost supernatural. She thought about him at fifteen, the day they had left his father, the way he had stood in the doorway of their old house and looked back once, just once, before climbing into the van without a word.

He had been brave for her then. Now it was her turn to be brave for him.

The exit for Ashford appeared at 11:47 p.m., a green sign reflecting in her headlights, the letters blurring for a moment before snapping into focus. She took the off-ramp and found herself on a two-lane road that wound through dense forest, the trees pressing close on either side like walls of shadow. The town itself, when she reached it, was barely a town at all: a single main street lined with darkened storefronts, a gas station with a flickering neon sign, a diner that had closed hours ago. The mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks invisible against the starless sky.

The parking authority would not open until morning. Nora checked the time: 12:03 a.m. She had roughly forty-one hours remaining. The urgency gnawed at her, a physical sensation in her chest, but she forced herself to be rational. Driving around a strange town in the middle of the night would accomplish nothing. She needed rest. She needed a clear head. She needed to be sharp for whatever came next.

She found a motel on the edge of town, a low-slung building with a cracked parking lot and a sign that read "Mountain View Inn" despite there being no mountain in sight. The clerk at the front desk was a teenage girl who barely looked up from her phone as Nora checked in. She paid in cash, using a name that was not her own, and carried her single bag to a room that smelled of bleach and stale cigarette smoke. She locked the door. She wedged a chair under the handle. She checked the windows twice. Then she lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep that did not come.

At some point, she must have drifted off, because she woke with a start to the sound of her phone vibrating against the nightstand. The clock on the wall read 3:17 a.m. Of course it did.

The call was from an unknown number.

She answered it without speaking, pressing the phone to her ear and listening to the silence on the other end. For a long moment, there was nothing but static. Then a voice, distorted and metallic, as if filtered through some kind of voice changer.

"You left Verdant Hill. That was unwise."

Nora's grip tightened on the phone. "Where is my son?"

"Your son is exactly where you left him. In the house. Did you not check the basement?"

The basement. She had checked the basement. She had checked every room, every closet, every corner. Matty was not there. She knew he was not there.

"You are lying."

"Am I? Then by all means, keep driving. Keep searching for your precious Dr. Reyes. But every hour you spend chasing ghosts is an hour your son spends alone in the dark. Tick tock, Ms. Valentine."

The line went dead.

Nora stared at the phone, her heart hammering. The basement. She had checked the basement. She had turned on the light and walked down the creaking wooden stairs and scanned every corner of that damp, musty space. There had been nothing there. Just boxes of Aunt Celia's belongings, a furnace that rattled when it ran, and a smell that she had attributed to decades of neglect.

But there had been a door. She remembered it now, a small door set into the far wall, half-hidden behind a stack of boxes. She had assumed it was a crawlspace. She had not opened it.

She called Matty's phone. It rang six times and went to voicemail. She called again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail.

She was reaching for her keys, ready to abandon Ashford and drive straight back to Lilac Lane, when a different instinct stopped her. The caller had known she was looking for Katherine Reyes. The caller had known she was in Ashford. If Eliza's surveillance network extended this far, then she was being watched even now. And if she was being watched, then going back to Verdant Hill without what she came for would be playing directly into Eliza's hands.

The voice had told her to go back. That meant she should not go back. Not yet.

She sat on the edge of the bed and forced herself to think. The call had been designed to rattle her, to make her abandon reason and rush home. That meant she was getting close to something. Katherine Reyes was the key. Katherine had evidence. Katherine could help her fight back.

She waited for dawn.

The Ashford Parking Authority was a small office wedged between a laundromat and a bakery that had gone out of business. Nora arrived at eight o'clock sharp, the first customer of the day. The clerk behind the counter was an older man with a white beard and the patient expression of someone who had spent decades dealing with minor bureaucratic inconveniences. His name tag read "Earl."

"Help you?" Earl asked, not looking up from the newspaper he was reading.

"I am looking for information about a parking citation. It was issued about eighteen months ago to a woman named Katherine Reyes. She drives a—" Nora consulted the notes on her phone. "A blue Subaru Outback, 2019 model."

Earl lowered his newspaper and regarded her with mild curiosity. "You a skip tracer?"

"I am a friend. We lost touch. I am trying to find her."

The lie came easily now. She was getting better at this.

Earl studied her for a moment longer, then shrugged and turned to his computer. "Reyes, you said? Let me see." His fingers moved across the keyboard with the slow deliberation of someone who had never quite gotten comfortable with technology. "Here we go. Citation number 44392, issued October 8th, two years ago. Expired meter on Main Street. Fine was paid the next day."

"Is there an address? A forwarding address?"

"The address on file is a P.O. box. Number 127, Ashford Post Office." He paused, squinting at the screen. "But there is a note here. The vehicle was registered to a rural route address. Route 7, Box 42. That is up in the hills, maybe twenty miles from here. Not much up there but trees and solitude."

Nora wrote down the address, her hand shaking slightly. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Ma'am?" Earl called as she turned to leave. "This friend of yours. She in some kind of trouble?"

Nora hesitated at the door. "I hope not. But I am starting to think she might be the only one who can get me out of mine."

Route 7 was a gravel road that climbed into the mountains, winding through dense stands of pine and hemlock. The houses, such as they were, appeared at long intervals, their mailboxes standing at the ends of driveways that disappeared into the trees. Number 42 was the last one, a rutted dirt track that seemed to lead nowhere at all. Nora almost missed it. The mailbox was rusted, the numbers barely legible, and the driveway was so overgrown that it looked abandoned.

She turned onto it anyway, her sedan bouncing over roots and rocks, the branches scraping against the windows like fingernails. After half a mile, the trees opened up to reveal a small clearing. A cabin stood at its center, modest but well-maintained, with a blue Subaru Outback parked in the driveway.

Nora's heart leaped into her throat.

She parked behind the Subaru and stepped out of the car, her legs unsteady after the long drive. The cabin was silent. No smoke rose from the chimney. No lights glowed in the windows. But the car was there, and the car meant someone was home.

She knocked on the front door. No answer. She knocked again.

"Dr. Reyes? My name is Nora Valentine. I live on Lilac Lane. I need your help."

Silence.

Nora was about to turn away when she heard a sound from inside. A bolt sliding back. The door opened a crack, revealing a chain and a single eye, dark and watchful.

"Lilac Lane?" The voice was hoarse, unused, as if the speaker had not talked to anyone in a very long time. "How did you find me?"

"I have your files. Patricia Holloway gave them to me. She said you might be able to help."

The eye blinked. The door closed. Nora heard the chain slide free, and then the door opened fully, revealing a woman who looked nothing like the photograph she had found in the study. Katherine Reyes had aged a decade in three years. Her hair was grey now, pulled back in a severe bun, and her face was lined with the kind of wrinkles that came from worry rather than time. She was thin, too thin, her collarbones sharp beneath her sweater. But her eyes were the same: intelligent, assessing, the eyes of someone who saw more than she let on.

"Come in," Katherine said. "Quickly. And close the door behind you."

The interior of the cabin was sparse but clean. A single room served as kitchen, living room, and study, with a door at the back that presumably led to a bedroom. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and a desk in the corner was covered in papers and file folders. A laptop sat open, its screen dark.

Katherine gestured for Nora to sit on a worn armchair while she took a seat at the desk. "Patricia gave you my files. That means you know what I know. About the surveillance. About the harassment. About the poisonings."

"I know some of it. Not all."

Katherine nodded slowly. "Then tell me what happened. Tell me why you are here."

Nora told her everything. The move to Lilac Lane. The gift basket. The posts on The Hearth. Matty's discovery. The poisoned jam. The meeting with Patricia. Matty's disappearance. The threatening note. The phone call. She did not leave anything out. If Katherine was going to help her, she needed to know the whole truth.

When she finished, Katherine was silent for a long moment. Then she stood up and walked to the window, staring out at the trees.

"Eliza Alistair," she said, her voice flat, "is the most dangerous person I have ever met. Not because she is violent, though she is capable of violence. Not because she is intelligent, though she is certainly that. She is dangerous because she is patient. She does not act on impulse. Every move she makes is calculated, planned years in advance. She builds her traps slowly, so slowly that the victims do not realize they are trapped until it is too late."

"You know her. You studied her. How do I stop her?"

Katherine turned from the window. "You do not stop her. You survive her. There is a difference."

"I am not going to just survive. She has my son."

"Your son is alive," Katherine said, and there was something in her voice that made Nora's blood run cold. Certainty. Not hope, not reassurance, but certainty. "Eliza does not kill children. Not directly. She uses them as leverage. As long as you are a threat to her, your son is valuable. The moment you stop being a threat, he becomes disposable."

"Then what do I do? How do I become enough of a threat that she has to keep him alive?"

Katherine walked to her desk and opened a drawer. She withdrew a thick folder, its edges worn, its surface covered in handwritten notes.

"This is everything I have on Eliza Alistair. Bank records. Property records. Evidence of illegal surveillance. Testimony from former victims. And something else. Something I never showed anyone. Something that could actually bring her down."

She opened the folder and withdrew a single photograph.

It showed Eliza Alistair, younger, perhaps thirty years ago, standing beside a man who was clearly a younger version of Officer Daniel Mercer. They were not posing for the camera. They were caught in a moment of intimacy, their faces close, their body language unmistakable. An affair. A secret that had been buried for decades.

"Eliza and Officer Mercer," Katherine said. "Before he was married. Before he joined the force. Before she married her husband, who died under circumstances that were never fully investigated. This photograph proves a connection between them that goes back decades. It explains why the police have always looked the other way. It is leverage. It is the one thing she cannot afford to have exposed."

Nora stared at the photograph. "Why did you not use it?"

"Because I was afraid. And because by the time I found it, my house was already burning down. I ran. I have been running ever since." Katherine closed the folder and pushed it across the desk. "I have lived in this cabin for three years, looking over my shoulder every day. I am tired of running. If you want to fight, I will help you. But you need to understand what you are getting into. Eliza Alistair will not stop. She will never stop. The only way to end this is to expose her so completely, so publicly, that even her allies cannot protect her."

"Then help me do that," Nora said. "Help me bring her down."

Katherine looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded.

"There is something else you should know. Something I did not put in the files because I was not sure it was true. But I have had three years to research it, and now I am certain."

"What is it?"

"Eliza Alistair has been poisoning people for longer than anyone realizes. Her husband. Her sister-in-law, who challenged her for control of the family estate. A business partner who tried to force her out of a deal. All of them died of heart failure. All of them were cremated before anyone thought to ask questions. I pulled their medical records, their death certificates. The symptom profiles are identical. Nausea. Arrhythmia. Cardiac arrest. And in every case, someone reported seeing Eliza give them a gift shortly before they fell ill. Homemade preserves. Baked goods. A bottle of wine."

Nora thought about the jar of jam in her cupboard. The bitter taste. The numbness.

"She has been doing this for thirty years," Katherine said. "And she has never been caught. Because she is careful. Because she is patient. Because she knows exactly how much to give and when to stop. The poison is not meant to kill, not usually. It is meant to weaken. To frighten. To send a message. If you cross Eliza Alistair, you will suffer. And if you do not get the message, the next dose will be stronger."

"Then we need to prove it. We need evidence that will hold up in court."

"I have been working on that," Katherine said, and for the first time, something like hope flickered in her eyes. "There is a lab. An independent toxicology lab in Ashton. I have a contact there, a woman who owes me a favor. If you can get me a sample of the oleander honey, I can have it tested. I can prove that it is poison."

"The jar was stolen. Someone took it from my kitchen while I was meeting with Patricia."

"Then we need to find another one. Eliza makes the honey every summer. She gives it to people she wants to control. There must be other jars, somewhere in the neighborhood. If we can get one—"

Nora stood up, her mind racing. "Patricia. She said Eliza gave her something. She did not say what, but she was afraid of it. She might still have it."

"Then go back. Get the jar. Bring it to me. And Nora?" Katherine reached across the desk and gripped her hand, her fingers cold and surprisingly strong. "Be careful. You are not just fighting a woman. You are fighting a system. A web of favors and secrets and blackmail that she has been weaving for three decades. She will use everything she has against you. Everything."

Nora nodded. She took the folder and the photograph and tucked them into her bag. Then she walked out of the cabin, climbed into her car, and began the long drive back to Verdant Hill.

The clock on the dashboard read 2:37 p.m. She had roughly thirty-five hours remaining.

Somewhere, in a room she could not find, her son was waiting for her.

And somewhere, in a house at 39 Lilac Lane, a woman was watching, her telephoto lens glinting in the darkness, her lips curved in a smile that contained no warmth at all.

The trap was set. The pieces were moving. And Eliza Alistair had been playing this game for a very, very long time.