Sarah Vale refused to speak over the phone.
She named a crowded café forty minutes away.
Alexander went with two private security officers.
Sarah arrived wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap.
She was approximately Julia’s age.
Mid-forties.
She sat opposite Alexander and immediately placed a phone inside a signal-blocking pouch.
“You shouldn’t have brought company.”
“They’re mine.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re yours.”
Alexander studied her.
“What did Julia tell you?”
Sarah looked exhausted.
“That depends on what you know.”
“I know someone forged Rebecca’s identity, drugged my son, entered my house, and searched for something Julia hid.”
Sarah’s face changed.
“They’re looking for the ledger.”
“What ledger?”
She hesitated.
Julia had discovered something at Cole Dynamics before Henry was born.
A hidden financial system buried inside vendor payments.
At first she believed it was corporate fraud.
Then she found connections to private medical research.
Children’s hospitals.
Behavioral clinics.
Data brokers.
A company called Northstar Therapeutics.
Alexander recognized the name.
Cole Dynamics had once invested in Northstar.
The partnership ended after regulatory problems.
“What did Julia find?”
Sarah leaned closer.
“Northstar was collecting neurological data from children without proper consent.”
Alexander’s expression hardened.
“That would have destroyed them.”
“It would have destroyed more than Northstar.”
Some Cole executives had funded the research.
Not Alexander, Sarah insisted.
Julia believed he had been deliberately kept outside the project because he would shut it down.
She began gathering proof.
Then Henry was born.
Julia withdrew suddenly from work.
Alexander remembered.
She claimed she wanted to focus on motherhood.
Sarah gave another explanation.
“Someone threatened Henry.”
Alexander’s throat tightened.
Julia had hidden copies of records somewhere even Sarah never learned.
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