Laura Finch found Nia through Marcus Webb, who had started attending the library sessions and who, by that point, had shifted from polite tolerance to genuine engagement. Laura called the library's front desk and left a message with her name and the word "Courier." Nia called back from her grandmother's phone.
Their first conversation lasted twenty minutes and was almost entirely professional. Laura was direct in the way people are when they've decided to respect someone by not managing them. She didn't soften her questions for Nia's age.
"I've been pulling the financial structure of the charity," Laura said. "There are two entities that keep appearing as intermediary processors on the fund transfers, both registered in Delaware, both with minimal public footprint. One of them shares a registered agent with a holding company that has a board member I recognize."
"Who?" Nia asked.
"A man named Griffin Harlow. He's not publicly known in Chicago, but he has a long history in private equity, specifically in acquiring distressed tech companies—companies that become distressed because their founders are discredited."
Nia wrote the name in the notebook. "How does that connect to Victor Hale?"
"Victor's personal financial advisor is a man who previously worked for one of Harlow's portfolio companies." Laura let that land. "It's not proof. It's a thread."
"It's a good thread," Nia said.
"It's also a dangerous one. Harlow has lawyers the way other people have furniture."
"Noted." Nia tapped her pen against the page. "I'll tell Ethan. Can you document the corporate connection formally enough to include in a motion?"
There was a brief pause on Laura's end, the kind that meant she was recalibrating. Then: "How old are you again?"
"Twelve."
"Right." Another pause. "Yes, I can document it."
That was the beginning of the alliance between Nia and Laura Finch: not dramatic, not ceremonial, just two people who recognized each other as serious and decided to work together.
The school, meanwhile, had noticed Nia's absence on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The principal, a decent man named Mr. Coleman, had called Ruth twice. Ruth had been honest with him the second time, in the way she was honest when she'd run out of patience for the polite version: her granddaughter was assisting in a legal matter and would be present for all graded assessments. Mr. Coleman had not pushed further, though his expression during their phone call suggested he had many thoughts he was keeping professionally contained.
What Mr. Coleman couldn't protect Nia from was the hallway.
The story had reached her school the way stories reach schools: in fragments, distorted by repetition and the particular social cruelty of twelve-year-olds who haven't yet learned to separate status from truth. A girl named Destiny, who sat two rows behind Nia in social studies, had found an article online claiming Nia was a publicity stunt planted by Ethan Caldwell's PR team to generate sympathy. The article was anonymous and appeared on a site Nia had never heard of, but Destiny didn't require journalistic credibility. She required an audience, and she had one.
"Girl, you know you're being used, right?" Destiny said, loudly enough for the six people around them in the hallway to hear. "He's just putting a little Black girl in front of the cameras so people feel sorry for him."
Nia didn't stop walking.
"My cousin said it's all fake. You're not actually helping with anything."
Nia kept walking, but she sat in the bathroom for four minutes during second period, hands pressed flat against the sink counter, looking at her own reflection. Not crying, just absorbing.
There was a version of Destiny's words that didn't have a clean answer—not because the accusation was true, but because the question underneath it was real: What if I'm not actually helping? What if I just think I am?
She thought about the March 9th log: the thirty-seven minutes, the account mapping changes. She dried her hands and went back to class.
That afternoon at the library, she was quieter than usual. Ethan noticed.
"You okay?"
"Yes."
He waited.
"People at school are saying I'm a stunt."
He was quiet for a moment. "Does it matter?"
"Not to the case."
"That's not what I asked."
She looked at the table. "A little."
"How long?"