The chapel’s air was thick with lilies and performance. Grief had rehearsed well.
Marin stood before the casket—the one they said held what was left of Derek Williams—and lifted the silver bucket. The congregation leaned forward, phones poised, faces angled to catch tragedy like it was light.
She smiled once—small, practiced—and poured.
It wasn’t holy water. It was paint remover. The kind used for industrial finishes, the kind that strips lies down to metal.
The “mahogany” veneer sloughed away first, revealing dull aluminum beneath. Then, as the chemicals hissed and peeled, letters emerged—etched not by grief but by a laser engraver. Coordinates. A date.
Murmurs rippled through the pews. A woman gasped. The blonde insurance agent at the back went white as plaster.
Marin’s voice carried over the sound like fine glass cracking:
“Derek wanted to vanish. He forgot I build foundations.”
She turned toward the cameras—streaming “for distant relatives”—and continued, perfectly calm:
“These coordinates point to a private airstrip in Nevada. Registered under an alias connected to the same offshore account where our savings went. So, before anyone buries another lie, check who signed the death certificate.”
The chapel doors burst open then—two federal agents, wind, and consequence following them in. The blonde woman tried to slip out the side, but the camera pivoted, catching her face.
Marin stepped aside, letting the professionals pass. Her expression didn’t change, even as one agent lifted the lid of the casket to reveal not a body, but a mannequin weighted with dive gear and a passport sealed in plastic.
Derek Williams hadn’t drowned. He’d departed.
And the woman he’d underestimated had turned his own funeral into a manhunt.
As the officers read the warrant, Marin walked to the exit, sunlight finding her through stained glass. A journalist tried to shout a question—“Mrs. Williams, how did you know?”
She paused in the doorway, the bucket swinging lightly in her hand.
“Because,” she said, “the man who taught me how to build walls forgot I designed the doors too.”
Outside, sirens bloomed in the distance—rising, falling, and finally, fading into applause.
