What Goes Around

Chapter 10 — Paranoia

The private investigator’s name was Harlan Voss, and he had the tired eyes of a man who had spent thirty years confirming people’s worst suspicions for money.

His office was above a bail bondsman on the east side, the kind of place with venetian blinds that hadn’t been dusted since the Clinton administration. Daniel had gotten his name years ago from a lawyer friend, back when Reyes Construction was fighting a lien dispute — a man who asked no questions and forgot every answer. Now Daniel sat across from him with his own questions burning a hole in his chest, and Voss slid the folder across the desk like a dealer laying down a losing hand.

“She’s clean,” Voss said, sliding the folder across Daniel’s desk. “Cleaner than clean. I’ve been doing this twenty-two years, Mr. Reyes, and I have never handed a client a file this boring.”

Daniel opened the folder with hands he willed to be steady.

Sofia Mendez, 28. Born in Houston. Raised in the Heights. Father — deceased, heart attack, 2019. Mother — living, works as a school cafeteria manager, no criminal record. Sofia: bachelor’s in marketing from the University of Houston, 3.8 GPA. Employed at a boutique agency downtown, two promotions in four years. Glowing references. No arrests. No lawsuits. No bankruptcies. No restraining orders. One speeding ticket, 2021, paid on time. Credit score: 781. Social media: unremarkable. Volunteer work: two Saturdays a month at a food bank.

Page after page of nothing.

He read about the food bank Saturdays. He read the quote from her boss — “the most reliable person I’ve ever hired” — and the note from her landlord: never late, never a complaint, leaves the place spotless. He read about the rescue dog she’d adopted three years ago, a nervous beagle mix named Biscuit. He read it all twice, looking for the crack, the seam, the one line that didn’t fit. There was nothing. It read like the biography of a saint, or a ghost.

“That’s everything?” Daniel asked.

“That’s everything there is.” Voss leaned back in the chair. “Look, I don’t know what you were expecting to find — and I don’t want to know — but this woman is a model citizen. If you’re worried about your son marrying her, you’re worried about nothing.”

Daniel stared at the photograph clipped to the first page. Sofia at some company event, smiling, holding a glass of white wine. The same smile from the dinner table. The same smile from the photograph on his phone at 3 AM.

Warm. Charming. Perfect.

Too perfect.

“How thorough was the background check?” Daniel asked. “The deep one. Family, childhood, all of it.”

Voss’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes went professionally flat. “I checked everything that’s checkable, Mr. Reyes. Birth records, school records, employment, financials, legal. There’s no sealed file. There’s no alias. There’s no gap in the timeline.” He tapped the folder. “”She’s exactly who she says she is.”

Daniel’s thumb found the edge of the photograph. “What about family? You said you checked family.”

“Mother’s alive, father passed in ’19, like I said.” Voss flipped to a back page. “One sibling. Older sister — Lucia. Died in 2005. Car accident.” He glanced up. “Hit-and-run, actually. Never solved.”

The room went very still. Daniel could hear the bail bondsman’s neon sign buzzing through the floor.

“That’s all it says,” Voss added. “Tragic thing. Sofia would’ve been — what, eight? Nine?”

Eight, Daniel thought. She would have been eight years old, and she grew up, and she got a marketing degree and adopted a beagle and volunteered at a food bank, all of it built on top of a grave.

“Anything else?” Daniel asked.

“That’s everything there is.””

Daniel closed the folder.

“Run it again,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Deeper. Talk to people. The neighbors. The coworkers. The food bank.” Daniel’s voice was tight. “Somebody knows something.”

Voss studied him for a long moment. Then he stood, picked up the folder, and tucked it under his arm.

“I’ll send you the invoice,” he said.

After he left, Daniel sat alone in his office and looked at the empty desk where the folder had been, and felt the floor shifting under him in a way that had nothing to do with the building’s foundation.

A spotless record. No gaps. No shadows. A woman with nothing to hide.

Daniel had spent twenty years building a life on top of a secret, and he knew — with the bone-deep knowledge of a man who had done it himself — exactly how much work it took to look clean.

He thought about the letter, about the ash in his kitchen sink. I know what you did. He thought about a young woman at a graveside, twenty years of white roses, growing up into someone who smiled at his dinner table and asked such innocent questions. You remind me of someone. Had that been innocent? Had any of it been innocent?

He walked to the window and looked out at the yard behind the office, at the crew loading lumber into a truck, at the ordinary sunlit world going about its ordinary business. Miguel’s truck was parked by the gate — his son, laughing with one of the crew, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, happy in a way Daniel hadn’t been in twenty years. And Daniel understood, standing there with the sun on his face, that he would burn down everything he had built before he let any of this touch his son.

The thought arrived fully formed, the way true things always do:

*Nobody is that clean unless they’re hiding something.*