Chương 5
“I need to know.”
“No.”
The firmness in Marcus’s voice surprised him.
“You need to think.”
Daniel stared at him.
Marcus looked uncomfortable giving orders to the owner of the building.
But he did not move.
“You walk outside angry, you don’t know what you’re walking into.”
The old Daniel would have dismissed him.
The old Daniel would have called it unnecessary caution.
Instead, he looked through the glass doors.
A man passing on the sidewalk.
A woman waiting for a rideshare.
A delivery driver checking his phone.
A hundred ordinary movements hiding a hundred possibilities.
He stepped back.
“Get the records.”
Marcus nodded.
Daniel returned to the seating area.
Emma was drawing on a piece of paper from the reception desk.
He sat beside her.
“What are you drawing?”
She covered it slightly.
“Nothing.”
Daniel smiled.
“That usually means something.”
She looked at him carefully.
“You’re different than my mom said.”
“What did she say?”
“That you were nice before.”
The word stayed with him.
Before.
Daniel looked at the drawing.
It was a house.
Three people stood outside it.
One was taller than the others.
One was smaller.
The third figure was drawn with long hair.
“Is that you and your mom?”
Emma nodded.
“Who’s the other person?”
She hesitated.
“My dad.”
Daniel looked at the drawing again.
“Does your dad live with you?”
Emma’s pencil stopped.
“No.”
The answer was simple.
But something about the way she said it was not.
“Where is he?”
Emma looked at Anna.
Her mother immediately shook her head.
“Emma.”
The girl lowered her eyes.
“He left.”
Daniel did not push.
He knew what leaving looked like.
Not always a person walking away.
Sometimes it was a person sitting in the same room and slowly becoming unreachable.
His phone buzzed.
A message from Richard.
We need to talk before this gets worse.
Daniel stared at it.
Anna noticed.
“Richard?”
He looked at her.
“You know his name.”
“I know who he is.”
“How?”
Anna looked uncomfortable.
“Because he signed my termination paperwork.”
Daniel read the message again.
The words were careful.
Professional.
Almost kind.
He had spent years trusting people who knew how to sound calm during disasters.
Maybe because he wanted calm more than truth.
Marcus returned with a printed document.
“Access records.”
Daniel took it.
The pages showed entries from the last twelve hours.
Employees.
Visitors.
Deliveries.
Nothing unusual at first.
Then he saw the name.
A visitor entry from earlier that evening.
The visitor had entered thirty minutes before Anna arrived.
The name on the form made his fingers tighten around the paper.
Thomas Calder.
His brother’s name.
The signature was not his brother’s.
But someone had used it.
And beneath the name was a company access code that should have been impossible to activate.
The name stared back at him from the paper like a mistake someone had forgotten to erase.
Thomas Calder.
Daniel’s brother had been gone for four years.
His name should have existed only in old photographs, medical records, and the conversations Daniel avoided having after too much wine.
It should not have been printed on a visitor log inside his own company.
It should not have opened doors.
And it definitely should not have appeared on the same night a frightened child arrived carrying a message from someone who claimed Daniel was the only person she could trust.
“Where did this come from?” Daniel asked.
Marcus looked at the paper.
“The access system.”
“No.”
Daniel pointed at the name.
“I mean who entered it?”
Marcus shook his head.
“The system shows the badge number, not always the person.”
“Always?”
Marcus hesitated.
Daniel noticed.
“What?”
“Some administrative accounts can override entries.”
“Who has those accounts?”
Marcus looked uncomfortable.
“Executives.”
“How many?”
“Four.”
Daniel already knew the answer before Marcus spoke.
“Yours.”
“Richard’s.”
“The chief operating officer’s.”
“And?”
Marcus looked down.
“The account assigned to your brother.”
The lobby seemed to become completely still.
Daniel looked at Anna.
She did not look surprised.
That bothered him more than anything else.
“You knew.”
Anna shook her head.
“I suspected.”
“You suspected my dead brother still had access to my company?”
“No.”
She looked at the paper.
“I suspected someone wanted you to believe that.”
Daniel turned away.
For a few seconds, nobody spoke.
He wanted to be angry.
Anger was easier.
Anger had direction.
Fear did not.
But underneath the anger was something worse.
A memory.
Thomas sitting across from him at a diner six months before he died, tapping his coffee cup against the table while telling Daniel he was becoming impossible to reach.
You don’t ask people what they’re afraid of anymore, Tom had said.
You just ask what they can produce.
Daniel had laughed at the time.
He had told him that running a company meant making decisions, not collecting feelings.
Thomas had looked at him with a sadness Daniel did not understand until much later.
Now that sadness felt like a message he had ignored.
“Mr. Calder.”
Marcus’s voice brought him back.
Daniel folded the paper.
“I need to see the security footage.”
Marcus nodded.
“I’ll pull it.”
“Not through the normal system.”
Marcus looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because if someone can create a visitor entry using an account that should not exist, I don’t know what else they can change.”
Marcus did not argue.
That was becoming a pattern Daniel appreciated.
People who understood uncertainty were usually the ones who had experienced it.
Anna stood.
“I need to leave.”
Daniel looked at her.
“No.”
Her expression hardened.
“You don’t get to tell me that.”
“Someone may be watching you.”
“They already are.”
“That’s exactly why you stay.”
Anna looked toward Emma.
The argument disappeared from her face for a moment.
She was not thinking about herself.
She was thinking about her daughter.
Daniel noticed because he recognized the feeling.
The terrible responsibility of knowing another person’s safety depended on your choices.
“I’ll arrange a room upstairs,” he said.
Anna frowned.
May you like
“What?”
“A private office.”
