I wasn’t looking for drama anymore. I was looking for paperwork.
I heard Preston’s voice in my head.
Lindsay’s been coming by every morning, making sure she eats, takes her vitamins.
I stood up so fast my chair barked backward across the floor.
Dr. Nash put a hand lightly on my forearm.
“Mr. Trevor?”
“I need to make some calls.”
The first call went to our bank’s fraud department.
The second went to Margaret Holloway.
Margaret was not a woman you hired for reassurance. She was a woman you hired when you wanted a straight road between damage and consequence. Late fifties. Silver bob. Suits cut like decisions. She had represented my company in a contract dispute eight years earlier and ended the matter so cleanly that the opposing counsel actually looked relieved to lose because at least it was over.
She answered on the third ring.
“Holloway.”
“Margaret. It’s Warren Trevor. I need private counsel, probably civil protection, and I need it today.”
Her voice sharpened.
“Tell me why.”
So I told her.
The ICU. The toxicology. The gradual exposure. Lindsay’s morning visits. The bank transfers. The insurance question I had not answered yet but could feel circling like weather.
When I finished, Margaret did not gasp. She did not say my God. She did not offer sympathy before strategy.
She said, “Do not touch anything in that house unless law enforcement tells you to. Do not clean. Do not throw anything away. Do not confront either of them in writing beyond what you have already sent. Save every message. Screenshot every transfer. Forward everything to my secure email in the next thirty minutes. Can you do that?”
“I can.”
“Good. I am going to coordinate with the hospital’s reporting trail and make sure the police receive a coherent evidentiary package instead of a grieving husband’s panic spiral. In the meantime, lock every financial door you have. Every account. Every automatic transfer. Every card. Remove Preston’s access to anything with your last name on it.”
“I already started.”
“I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
Then she paused.
“One more thing, Warren. They may still think they have time. Let them think that a little longer.”
That sentence lodged inside me like a blade placed gently on a table.
Within twenty minutes I had every remaining account frozen or restructured. Preston’s emergency transfer permissions disappeared. The secondary card on the household line was canceled. The linked savings was isolated. Passwords changed. Security questions changed. Two-factor devices changed.
Then my phone began to ring.
Preston, four times.