Page 11 of Override

My fingers tapped twice against the edge of the desk.

"I hate clean," I muttered.

People weren't clean. People lied to their spouses. Forgot to pay speeding tickets. Used the same password for twenty different websites. Bought stupid things at two in the morning after too much whiskey.

They were messy. Gallagher wasn't messy. He was curated.

That bothered me more than if I'd found something illegal.

A notification slid across the corner of one monitor.

Vehicle movement detected. Gallagher Estate. My attention shifted automatically.

Not because I cared where Maeve Gallagher spent her afternoon.

Because I cared where Ronan's wife spent her afternoon.

If he was building connections through the marriage, she was another piece on the board.

The estate gates opened. Not Ronan. Maeve.

I watched her sedan merge into traffic, then mirrored the GPS feed onto another screen. No escort vehicle. No security following behind. Just her.

Interesting.

The route took her across town before she pulled into a medical complex.

Women's Health Associates.

Routine. Probably. Still...

She parked farther from the entrance than she needed to. Sat inside the car for almost three minutes. Then climbed out wearing oversized sunglasses despite the overcast sky.

My eyes narrowed. Not because sunglasses meant anything. Because she'd looked into the rearview mirror twice before getting out.

Not checking her makeup. Checking behind her.

I rewound the footage. Watched again. Same movement. Same pause.

My fingers are moving across the keyboard before conscious thought catches up.

The clinic's network folded with embarrassing ease. Reception software. Appointment logs. Insurance records. Maeve Gallagher. Nothing. I tried O'Donnell. Nothing.

That was...odd.

I widened the search. Cash payments. Manual entries. Recently archived files. One appointment caught my eye.

Mary Collins.

Cash. No insurance. No listed emergency contact. Age. Height. Weight.

Close enough that my fingers stopped moving altogether. "Huh."

I opened the intake paperwork. Most of it had been scrubbed clean, but whoever entered the information had forgotten to change the metadata attached to the scanned driver's license.

Maeve Gallagher.

Someone had deliberately checked her in under another name.