Chapter 2: A Dead Woman's Name

The identity kit contained a driver's license, a social security card, a birth certificate, a library card, and a passport. The name on all of them was Claire Ashford. Attorney Priya Mehta — formerly Priya Mehta, now apparently Claire Ashford — sat in a motel room in rural Idaho and read them in order, the way she would examine evidence. Methodically. Without flinching. She had spent twelve years not flinching at things that deserved flinching. The U.S. Marshal who'd set her up had been brisk and impersonal and had left before she could ask the questions she needed to ask, which was either efficiency or deliberate avoidance, and she was beginning to think it was the latter. She opened her laptop — new, as clean as the identity — and searched for Claire Ashford. She found an obituary. Claire Ashford, 34, of Boise, Idaho. Died unexpectedly in October. Survived by her mother and a younger brother. She had worked as a dental hygienist. She had been on the swim team in college. She had, according to the obituary, been 'beloved by all who knew her.' Six months ago. Died six months ago. Priya closed the laptop and sat in the specific silence of a room where nothing was familiar — not the bedspread, not the light, not her own name. The Marshal had said: clerical error. These things happen in high-volume processing. She was an attorney. She knew how clerical errors happened. She also knew the specific effort required to not have them happen — the verification steps, the database checks, the standard protocols that existed precisely because the consequences of this kind of error were severe. This was not a clerical error. She picked up the burner phone they'd given her and called the only number programmed into it. The line rang eleven times and went to voicemail. She looked at Claire Ashford's library card for a long time. Then she put it in her pocket and went to find the nearest library.