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hope.
    “I told Shirley.” Nora pressed the tissue in her hands into a tight ball. “She’s the only person I could really talk to about everything. She helped me when I had to decide whether to have Brent cremated, or brought back here to the States.” Nora looked pleadingly at Mia. “I needed her. Besides, I’d have had to explain everything to her anyway, now that she got the mail from Brent and all.”
    Mia could hardly stand seeing Nora’s pain. She felt it, too, but not nearly as magnified and constant. “It’s okay. I understand.” She hoped she sounded reassuring even though she wished only she and Nora knew about Brent’s suspicions. “But this is very serious. I need you to make sure no one else finds out about what you’ve told me.” She chose her words carefully since she was dealing with a frightened, brokenhearted mother. “If Brent was a victim of foul play, then others could be in danger, too.” Like you…and me.
    “How did this happen?” Nora asked, desperation in her voice. “Two weeks ago I had a mostly happy, healthy son. Now he’s gone. All I have left is a video telling me good-bye and how much he loved me, more grief than I can manage, and worry that someone might be after me.”
    Mia could compile a similar list, although not nearly as grave. “I’m so sorry.”
    About lots of things.
    “I appreciate you having the strength to keep your promise to Brent,” Mia said. “And for giving me this.” She held up the envelope, then tucked it into her purse. “I’ll watch it as soon as I can.”

Seeming to sense that Mia was getting ready to leave, Nora slid to the edge of her seat and clutched Mia’s hand in a death grip. “There’s one last thing you can do for me and Brent.” She squeezed Mia’s hand until it hurt. “I’m begging you to go to Switzerland and find out what really happened to him.”

Chapter Four
    Mia sat in her assigned seat up on the stage in the O’Byrne Gallery. She sneaked in a deep breath, working to look relaxed in front of all the cameras and the media. No doubt millions of people were tuned in to the press conference that had just gotten under way. She sat numbly next to her brother, who seemed much more at ease than she was. If Nora was to be believed, Mia was sitting in support of her family’s company’s launching the very vaccine Brent had been suspicious about before he’d died. But she didn’t have enough information to stand up and object.
    She’d had no time to watch the video Brent had sent her. Even if she had, there’d be quite a bit of due diligence to be done before she’d believe his claims. Still, she worried. Brent hadn’t been an overreactor or a conspiracy-theory type. What could he have know that would’ve compelled someone to kill him to keep it secret?
    Mia couldn’t get Nora off her mind. Despite everything she was going through, she’d been very gracious to Mia and always had been. She was also an awesome mom to Brent. Totally opposite of Mia’s mother, with whom Mia had rarely gotten along. Mia was still working out why. Because she’d been a grandmother and granddaddy’s girl, and a daddy’s girl? Or because her mother had only a finite amount of love to give her twins and most of it went to Matthew? The last guess made more sense because Matthew never had a thought that wasn’t put in his head by their mother. Besides, he looked just like her, whereas Mia favored their father.
    Mia glanced across the stage at her mother, studying her closely, searching for a sign that anything was amiss. Catherine Moncure looked typecast for her part as the powerful senior senator from Virginia. Appropriately dressed in her bloodred suit, she shifted her blue eyes from camera to camera, her chin tipped up, her prominent nose raised as if she smelled political opportunity in the air. Mia bet she hadn’t been the only one who’d had a recent appointment at the salon. Her mother’s short nearly black hair looked freshly