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lived by. They only took on clients they respected, ones without current ties to criminal or drug trafficking operations. They never killed women, even if the proposed target was as evil or even more so than the men Suro agreed to take care of for a very high price. And they always tried to keep kids out of their cases. Both Dex and Suro knew from experience what a shit hand you could get in the parent department through no fault of your own. They didn’t like using kids to get to their parents.
    But while adults could cover their online footprints better than most, unless parents kept their kids completely sequestered, it was impossible to keep them out of electronic systems, mostly because they had to attend schools and get doctor forms in order to attend those schools.
    “Her medical forms were all filled out by some free clinic in South Dakota—again, I doubt she lives there. It’s one of those places where they’ll see anyone, don’t matter if they have insurance are not. So yeah, I had to hit up the kid’s social security number. You said Lacey told you Sparkle was in public school before she came to Rise, so I’ll probably be able to track her down that way, but it’s going to take me a few days to get an exact location.”
    That was fine. Suro had no plans to deal with the woman from the bar until his son was ensconced back at Rise Academy for the year anyway.
    But Dexter had more to say. “Meanwhile my preliminary investigation brought up some strange shit, which is why I’m calling you now as opposed to later when I had all the information you wanted.”
    “What was that?” Suro asked, truly curious. This woman, Lacey, had faked her address, her child’s transcripts, and had gone out of her way to get medical forms for her kid from a free clinic in a state she probably didn’t live in. What else could there possibly be?
    But then Dexter dropped the biggest bomb of all. “It’s true Sparkle was born twelve years ago to a woman named Lacey Winters, but according to these documents I’m looking at, both of them died in a fire when Sparkle was two.”

CHAPTER 5
    Three Months Later
     
    “LET me get this straight,” Lacey said, rubbing her temples. “You know who did this, but you’re refusing to tell me his name.”
    “I’m very sorry, Ms. Winters, I know you must be eager to thank your gracious donor, but the donor requested anonymity,” Kate Lowell, Rise Academy’s bursar, answered.
    Lacey squeezed the old burner phone she used for calling her daughter’s school tight against her ear. “I don’t understand. Sparkle’s not even on scholarship. Why would someone just pay her full tuition for the year?”
    “We find donations aren’t always need-based. On occasion, a donor sees something rare in a student and decides to invest in his or her future. And your daughter is a musical prodigy.”
    “Yeah, but has anyone ever decided to invest a full year of tuition in the future of a non-scholarship student?”
    “Well, no,” answered Ms. Lowell, her voice faltering a bit. “But we certainly appreciate the donor’s generosity.”
    Ms. Lowell didn’t seem to have any problem with some anonymous donor just deciding to pay Sparkle’s tuition out of the blue, but Lacey was deeply unsettled. She had been living on the bare minimum of her salary for the past year in order to save up the money for her daughter’s insanely high tuition. And even then it had taken until the week before she was set to drive Sparkle back to gather all the funds.
    She’d gone to multiple Western Unions and 7-11s all over Chicago in order to put the money into cashier’s checks—the only way to get cashier’s checks without having to show ID or leave an online trail behind was to get them in small amounts. Then she’d driven her daughter the grueling forty-eight hours to school, only to find out her tuition had already been paid for the current school year. And when she’d tried to question the receptionist at