Chapter 1
Chapter One
Harriet
“Whoa,” KC the intern breathes, gawking at my latest spreadsheet hack.
“It’s really not that big a deal,” I say.
“It’s next level times infinity,” he insists.
Heat rushes to my cheeks. Praise like that always flusters me, especially because I know most people see my devotion to data organization as pitiful if not downright alarming.
A courier appears at the door just then. Saved by the bell.
He’s not our normal courier, and instead of the usual plastic or manila envelope, he’s carrying something that looks like a prop from the set of Mission: Impossible—dark charcoal gray with customs stamps and transit marks I’ve never seen.
A holographic thread glints through the material, and there’s even a tamper-evident seal.
I hold out a hand, assuming it’s something for Serena. “I can sign.”
“Are you Harriet Morgan?”
It’s for me?
My heart suddenly pounds against my ribs.
There’s only one reason I can think of for somebody to deliver something here for me.
James.
After all these years of fruitless searches and dead ends, I’d always imagined it would happen like this: A letter. A message. Something out of the blue.
We think we found your little brother. We’ve turned up new evidence, or we matched the dental records you sent. It could be anything.
“Are you Harriet Morgan?” he asks again.
I push up my glasses. “That’s me.”
“I’ll need to see ID.”
I rush back to my office to grab my wallet. My hands shake as I pull out my license, sign my name, and take the envelope.
He practically sprints out, like he’s afraid I’ll hand it back.
The envelope’s heavier than it looks. The paper feels expensive, almost alive beneath my fingers. Hope and dread war in my chest.
Hope that James might still be alive. Dread that he might not be.
I can still see the soft shimmer of summer air over the crosswalk. The glint off the monkey bars. “Stay there—I’ll be right back!” I’d said.
And James’s sweet little “Okay!” tinged with mild annoyance at being distracted from the important business of conquering the monkey bars.
He was tall for an eight-year-old boy. Capable. It would only be a few minutes.
Most of all, I remember how empty the playground looked when I returned.
We never saw him again.
If only I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my pre-teen love life, my little half brother would still be here. An adult now, like me.
Jeb, one of the sales guys, wanders over, coffee mug in hand. “That’s some ancient-looking mail. Did they send it from the Cold War?”
Serena sweeps through the office, a hurricane in Louboutins. She slows when she sees the envelope. “For me?”
“No, it’s… it’s for me.”
“Really? What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Her expression turns serious. “Harriet. Do you think…?”
Do I think it’s about James? she means.
“Maybe. I’ve got feelers out to every police station and morgue from Cleveland to Croatia.”
She places a hand on my shoulder. She’s one of the few people who doesn’t treat my belief that James is still alive like a sad obsession best not humored. She even lets me use company resources to dig into the case after hours. “Do you want me to open it?”
I shake my head. “I got this.”
Serena, Jeb, and KC watch as I unwind the string on the envelope. Another envelope slides out: cream-colored, thick, and sealed improbably with dark red wax that’s been imprinted with a dragon symbol.
What is this?
Who, outside of crafting influencers and Victorian cosplayers, uses a wax seal in this day and age?
“Okay...” I say.
I turn it over and push up my heavy glasses. My name is written in looping calligraphy across the front:
Harriet Morgan
And below it:
On the matter of the estate of R.M. Renfield
The return address reads:
Namfirescui & B?cil? Asocia?ii, Legal Executors
Strada Doamnei 17, Bucharest, Romania
My heart drops.
Renfield. Romania.
So it’s not about James at all.
“It’s from my deadbeat father,” I say. “Or... his estate lawyer.”
“I’m so sorry,” Serena says.
Because you don’t get letters from estate lawyers unless somebody died.
I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. “It’s okay. I didn’t even know him.”
“Still. He was your father,” Serena says.
Jeb squints at the envelope. “An estate notice. That means there’s a will, Harriet. Maybe an inheritance.”
I can feel everyone’s attention on me, little sprigs of hope perking up on my behalf. Like maybe something good will finally happen to the stuck girl, the organizational whiz with the pathetic life, the workaholic who keeps her mother, grandmother, and a failing family antique store afloat.
“Maybe it’s one of those long-lost noble estates or whatever, and you’re a zillionaire now,” Jeb says.
“Spoken like somebody who hasn’t met my father,” I say.
I didn’t know my father growing up. All I had was a name, Renfield, and the fact that my mom met him on a train rumbling through Eastern Europe. After their... encounter, he literally jumped off the train—while it was moving—and disappeared into the Carpathian Mountains.
After years of research and much to the mystification of my friends, I finally managed to track him down. But I’ve always had a weird gift for seeing things inside data.
That spring break, while my classmates were kicking back on beaches, I was in a café in a village on the southern edge of Karsovia, an obscure microstate located in the mountains between Romania and Ukraine, meeting my father.
The meeting was disturbing, let’s just say.
Very disturbing.
I stare at the envelope with its bizarro-world, old-timey wax seal, trying not to think about the strange ledgers he was working on while we sat there.
The people around me eventually drift away. I can only guess that Serena gave them one of her famous “get back to work” glares.
She places a hand on my arm, light but deliberate. “If you need to take the rest of the day off—”
“No way,” I say, shoving it aside. “I’ll open it later.”
“So... are you okay to tackle the meeting with the app team?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You sure?”
“I didn’t even know him,” I repeat. “I definitely don’t want anything from him.”