Chương 5
“Who said that?”
“Ethan.”
“What exactly?”
“Ask her about Harbor Six.”
Claire turned her face away.
Liam pulled the chair closer. “Is it a project?”
“Yes.”
“Is it on the drive?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Not tonight.”
“He used it to threaten you.”
“He uses everything to threaten everyone.”
“Claire.”
She looked back at him. “I said not tonight.”
Her voice had little strength, but the old boundary remained. Liam felt the familiar urge to push through it. He had pushed through boundaries for patients who were lying, confused, hypoxic, suicidal, or too frightened to understand their own danger. With Claire, he had alternated between pushing too hard and withdrawing completely.
“I need to know whether you’re in more danger.”
“I’m already in a trauma bed.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have energy for.”
Maya capped her pen. “She needs rest.”
Liam looked at her.
“She also needs,” Maya continued, “a physician who is not her brother.”
“I am not acting as her physician.”
“You are standing close enough to become one by accident.”
Claire made another small sound that might have been laughter. It hurt, and she pressed her lips together.
Liam stood. “I’ll be outside.”
“No pacing,” Claire said.
“I don’t pace.”
Maya and Claire looked at him.
He left.
At two in the morning, neurosurgery admitted Claire to a monitored private room. A police officer sat outside. Nora Shah arrived carrying a laptop, two phones, and a canvas grocery bag containing clothes that did not belong to Claire.
Nora was thirty-seven, thin, and usually composed to the point of intimidation. That night her black hair was twisted into a knot with a yellow pencil. She wore running shoes beneath dark trousers and had forgotten to remove a grocery-store sticker from one sleeve.
She found Liam at the end of the hall staring through a window at the empty ambulance bay.
“How is she?”
“Stable.”
“That word means something different when doctors say it.”
“It means she isn’t getting worse.”
“Is she awake?”
“On and off.”
Nora handed him one of the phones. “The emergency resolution is active. We notified the banks that the company’s authorized signatory is disputed. They froze outgoing transfers above fifty thousand and suspended new wires pending verification. We can’t lock every account, despite your dramatic telephone order.”
“I was concise.”
“You were impossible.”
“Did you open folder six?”
“No. The drive has to be imaged with law enforcement present. Claire insisted on a clean chain of custody.”
“She expected this.”
“She expected corporate retaliation.”
“Did she expect him to hit her?”
Nora looked through the window in the door. Claire was sleeping. Maya was adjusting the IV pump.
“I asked her two weeks ago whether she felt safe at home,” Nora said.
“What did she say?”
“She said safety was an imprecise word.”
“That sounds like her.”
“It sounded like someone avoiding an answer.”
Liam pressed his thumb against the cold edge of the phone. “And you let it go.”
Nora’s eyes moved to him. “Did you?”
He looked away.
Below them, an ambulance reversed into the bay. The warning beep echoed between concrete walls.
Nora sat on a bench and removed the pencil from her hair. “The board is divided. Marcus Vale supports the emergency resolution. Two directors say Claire’s revocation is valid. Three are claiming coercion or diminished capacity.”
“Based on what?”
“Ethan told them she suffered a psychiatric breakdown.”
Liam’s hand closed around the phone.
“He prepared that story before tonight,” Nora said. “There are emails. He told the board last month that Claire had become paranoid and obsessive.”
“She was auditing him.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t anyone call her?”
“Two did. She told them she was tired.”
“That’s all?”
“She was protecting the investigation. She thought if Ethan knew how much she had, he’d move the money.”
“He knew anyway.”
“Yes.”
Liam sat beside her.
For a while they listened to the ambulance crew speaking below. One paramedic complained about a broken thermos. Another said he had told him not to buy glass. Their voices faded when the bay doors shut.
Nora rubbed the mark left by the pencil behind her ear. “Ethan filed for an emergency injunction thirty minutes ago.”
“From a police station?”
“Denning filed it.”
“To do what?”
“Block the control transfer, stop disclosure of company records, and require Claire to return allegedly stolen privileged documents.”
“She built the records.”
“Ownership and access are different questions.”
“She was assaulted.”
“That matters. It doesn’t make procedure disappear.”
Liam looked toward Claire’s room. “Procedure is how men like him buy time.”
“Sometimes. It is also how evidence survives men like him.”
He said nothing.
Nora picked at the grocery-store sticker on her sleeve. “I brought sweatpants and a sweatshirt. They’re mine. Claire’s house is a crime scene, and her office access is disabled.”
“Ethan disabled it?”
“His operations team says it was automatic.”
“Do you believe them?”
“No.”
“Can the board remove him?”
“If Claire’s voting rights hold.”
“They hold.”
“Legally, probably. Politically, not yet.”
Liam turned. “What does that mean?”
“It means Apex employs six hundred people directly and thousands through contractors. It has municipal projects, pension investors, union agreements, loans with change-of-control clauses, and two developments already behind schedule. Directors who believe Ethan committed fraud may still fear that removing him tomorrow destroys the company before anyone knows what can be saved.”
“He assaulted her.”
“They’ll condemn that in carefully drafted language.”
His disgust was immediate.
Nora’s was quieter. “You asked what politically means. It means institutions can know a person is dangerous and still calculate the cost of acting.”
Inside the room, Claire woke to the sound of the IV pump alarming.
Maya silenced it and checked the line.
“Air?” Claire asked.
“Occlusion. Your elbow is bent.”
May you like
Claire straightened her arm.
The room smelled faintly of disinfectant and warmed plastic. Beyond the window, the city was dark except for parking-lot lights and the red blink of a communications tower. Her head felt too heavy for her neck.
