Melissa watched her sons ruin my little girl’s Easter dress and called it a joke—so I calmly told everyone to leave, and the look on her face said she had just remembered something important. / Chapter 85 / 117

Chapter 85 - The Cellar Beneath the Convent

The confession did not stop the wheels of justice; it set them spinning at terrifying speed. Within thirty minutes, Morrison had placed three emergency calls to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Montreal and the Sûreté du Québec.

"The Trois-Rivières facility closed down in 1998," Vance announced, hanging up the black landline telephone in the church vestry. "Most of the state wards were disbursed to community care homes. But the private wing—the old convent where the high-paying American families stashed their inconvenient daughters—was bought out by an offshore holding company."

"Whose holding company?" Caleb asked, stepping into the vestry, his brow furrowed with deep suspicion.

"An entity called Valmont Enterprises," Vance replied, reading from his notebook. "Registered in the Cayman Islands. But the local property taxes on the parcel outside Trois-Rivières have been wired every December from an escrow account at the First National Bank of Glens Falls."

"Greg's bank," I said immediately. The puzzle pieces were falling into place with sickening clarity. "Greg didn't just manage the local agricultural subsidies for Melissa’s husband. He handled the domestic wire transfers."

"We need to get up there before whoever fired that rifle realizes we have the registration," Morrison said, tossing his legal pad into a leather briefcase. "I’ve secured an emergency cross-border judicial warrant under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. We cross at Champlain in forty minutes."

"I’m coming with you," I said firmly.

"Nora, it's outside our jurisdiction, and whoever took that shot is still out there," Vance cautioned. "It’s dangerous. You should take Lily to the safehouse in Plattsburgh."

"No," I replied, my voice steady, iron-hard. "For ten years, you all let me believe Clara drowned in the freezing water of the Ausable River. You let me cry over an empty casket. You let Melissa sit in my living room, mocking me, ruining my daughter’s clothes, lording her unearned wealth over everyone while my sister was locked away in a concrete tomb! I am not staying behind in some motel room while you find out whether my sister is dead or alive."

Caleb stepped up beside me. "My truck is fueled, Detective. I know the back logging roads across the border near Hemmingford better than your GPS does. If the shooter is monitoring the main interstate at Champlain, they’ll see state cruisers coming from five miles away. We take my rig, slip through the commercial crossing at Covey Hill, and we’re in Trois-Rivières before dusk."

Vance looked at Caleb, then at my face, realizing that nothing short of handcuffs would stop me. He unclipped his duty weapon, checked the magazine, and holstered it.

"Twenty minutes," Vance said. "We leave through the rear logging trail."

As we carried Lily toward Caleb’s truck, the child looked up at me with those wide, haunting gray eyes—the exact same eyes that looked out from the yellowed photograph of Clara in the Quebec dossier.

"Mommy?" Lily whispered, holding her torn Easter bonnet against her chest. "Are we going to find the lady from the picture?"