This morning she’d placed a phone call to the courthouse and learned that criminal records were not available online, but that both criminal and civil records were available here. So she’d checked out of her hotel and relocated to the courthouse computer lab. She’d begun by searching for criminal and civil proceedings that named her parents, Erica and Todd Montgomery. Her efforts generated no matches. Nor did her efforts generate a match for Trina Brookside.

When she’d moved on to Jonathan Brookside, however, she’d hit pay dirt. So much pay dirt that she’d been momentarily caught by surprise, like a hide-and-seek-player who jumps when they discover their friend blinking at them from underneath a bed.

Seven civil suits had been filed against Jonathan over the years. But only two—one for wrongful termination and one for breach of contract—had been filed recently enough that the associated documents were available digitally.

She’d combed through those two suits and recorded all the pertinent details on her phone. Then she’d jotted down the case numbers for the other five cases.

When none of the nurses’ names resulted in a single criminal or civil charge, she’d consulted the staff member in the computer room, who’d informed Leah that she’d need to visit the closed file room to gain access to documents pertaining to the old suits filed against Jonathan.

She’d submitted a records request for the case numbers in question thirty minutes ago. Ever since, she’d been waiting alongside an elderly woman speaking Spanish quietly into her phone and a middle-aged couple. The wife was reading Better Homes & Gardens and the husband was dozing while sitting upright.

Seven suits against Jonathan.

Seven! That seemed like an unusually high number, but perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps that was a low number of suits for an individual who owned a company as large as Gridwork Communications Corporation.

“Ms. Montgomery?”

She approached the young blond man stationed behind the glass.

“Here you are.” He slid her the stack of pages he’d photocopied from the originals.

She thanked him and returned to her still-warm chair.

Quickly, she skimmed the pages. One suit for breach of contract. One for discrimination. One for intellectual property rights. Two for wrongful termination.

At first glance, it appeared two of the suits had been settled out of court and that he’d been acquitted of the rest. Which, of course, did not necessarily mean Jonathan had been innocent. The acquittals might simply mean that he’d had an excellent defense team.

Leah crossed her legs, collected a pen from her purse, and started wading through the dense legal language of the topmost sheet. Page by page, she circled every key fact—names, dates, the gist of the accusation, the result.

When she reached the intellectual property suit, she circled the plaintiff’s name. Ian Monroe O’Reilly.