# THOMPSON-HAYES: BLOOD MONEY
## Chapter Sixteen — The Three-Front War
Patricia arrived on Sunday with a printed timeline and the energy of a woman who had been awake since four.
She spread the timeline on Mia's kitchen table — a single page, dense with dates and names and arrows, the kind of document that looked overwhelming until you understood how to read it, which Patricia explained in six minutes flat.
Three fronts. Running simultaneously. Each one requiring different resources and a different register.
Front one was the legal fight. Tuesday's hearing on the debt instrument. Dorothy Mills' testimony. The authenticated board record. Patricia believed this was the most straightforward of the three because the evidence was clean and the law was on their side. The risk was not the me
