The next morning Gregory found a man standing outside the garage gate beside a dark sedan. He wore a neat overcoat despite the mild weather and held a slim leather folder against his chest. Gregory knew him before the man spoke. Michael Ventry had aged since the funeral confrontation, his hair thinner and his face more carefully controlled, but the resentment in his eyes was familiar. "Gregory Moss," Michael said. "Still collecting people who should know better than to trust you."
Gregory stopped a few feet inside the gate. "If you're here about a child, speak to her lawyer," he said. Michael smiled without warmth. "I already have lawyers. I came because I heard Hollow's little sister was spending time with the same crowd that got him killed."
Gregory felt his hands close, then forced them open. "That's an accusation you were never able to support," he replied. "You know where to send your concerns. Leave the property."
Michael glanced past him toward the building. "She looks like him in the old photographs," he said. "Shame what happens to children when people with the wrong priorities insist on raising them." The sentence did not contain an explicit threat, but Gregory heard the cruelty behind it.
He stepped back rather than closer. "The visit is over," he said, and returned to the office to call Martha and document the encounter. By the time Terry came out, Michael's sedan was already disappearing down the road.
Jimmy, who had seen part of the exchange from the paint bay, asked whether they should have followed the car. Gregory shook his head. "No," he said. "I gave the man a chance to leave. He left.
That's all we know." Terry looked relieved. "Nine years ago you'd have gone through the gate after him." Gregory stared at the road. "Nine years ago I didn't have a kid watching what I did next."
The meeting with Michael shook Sky more than Gregory expected. When she learned he had been outside the gate, she became very quiet and asked whether he had seen her. She told Natalie that she remembered Michael's name from a postcard sent to the group home months earlier, addressed to its administrator rather than to her. It had praised the facility's efforts to keep difficult teenagers away from dangerous influences. Sky had only noticed it because the handwriting resembled a card once left beside her confiscated sketchbook. The connection was uncertain, but Natalie recorded the memory for investigators to check.
Martha asked Sky's advocate to arrange a formal statement about the investigator and any communications she remembered. The advocate, a woman named Rachel Kim, met her in a neutral office and explained that she would not ask Sky to choose the answers adults wanted. Sky described