I had not.
Patricia glanced toward the clinic doors.
“You cannot keep me here,” she said.
“No one said you were being detained,” Cole replied.
“But investigators have obtained preservation orders for the relevant accounts and devices.
Leaving will not change that.”
Her face tightened.
“This is Ryan’s business.
Talk to him.”
Cole looked at her for a long moment.
“We have.”
That answer frightened her more than anything else he had said.
She turned to me.
“What are you trying to do?”
The question was so familiar that I almost laughed.
Ryan had asked it whenever I discovered a lie.
Patricia had asked it in court when I requested a fair division of the medical debt.
Megan had asked it when I confronted her about the late-night calls.
They never asked what they had done.
They asked what I planned to do about it.
“I’m trying to find out what happened to something that belonged to me,” I said.
Patricia’s eyes flickered.
Cole noticed.
He slid the first document back into the envelope and removed a photograph of a computer screen.
The image showed an email with several attachments.
The message itself was partially obscured, but the sender information was visible.
Patricia stopped breathing for a second.
The email had come from an account registered to her home.
“Someone used your network to send the consent form to the clinic,” Cole said.
“The attachment metadata indicates that the file was created on a laptop associated with that same account.”
“My house has guests,” Patricia said quickly.
“Ryan comes over.
Megan comes over.
That proves I did not create anything.”
“No,” Cole agreed.
“It does not prove who created it.”
Patricia seized on the sentence.
“Exactly.”
“But the original email was recovered,” he continued.
“Along with the messages sent before and after it.”
Her expression collapsed.
I did not yet know what those messages said.
Cole had told me only that the investigation had found evidence supporting my complaint and that I should meet him at Westbridge that morning.
Patricia knew more than I did.
That was why she had gone pale when he entered.
She had not been afraid of a misunderstanding.
She had been afraid of a record.
Cole asked her to contact an attorney before answering further questions.
Patricia snatched her handbag from the chair, but before she left, she leaned toward me.
“You have no idea what you are interfering with,” she whispered.
I looked at the envelope between us.
“I think that is exactly what I’m learning.”
She walked out without another word.
The clinic administrator brought Cole and me into a private conference room.
A lab director joined us and closed the door.
No one tried to soften the truth.
