Chapter 81 The Ledger's Secret

• Rain tapped against the library’s stained-glass windows, fracturing the afternoon light into jagged blues and greens. The air smelled of damp wool and paper decay, the kind of scent that clung to the back of your throat.
• I hunched over a carrel in the far corner, my laptop’s glow painting the wood grain a sickly gray. Across the room, an elderly librarian reshelved mysteries with methodic *thunks*, her orthopedic shoes squeaking like mice.
• The Sentinel files scrolled endlessly—decades of clinical trial data, funding reports, innocuous memos about office potlucks. But buried between spreadsheets and meeting minutes, a pattern slithered.