Chương 6
“You fired her.”
The words landed exactly where Daniel would have wanted them.
Emily looked at the blanket.
“I know.”
Andrew rubbed his face.
“Em, I’m not trying to attack you.”
“It’s working anyway.”
“I just need to understand.”
“No. You need the version that lets us get back to normal.”
“That’s unfair.”
“Yes.”
Andrew pulled the visitor chair away from the wall and sat.
Emily had not slept more than an hour.
Her mouth still tasted metallic.
She wanted her brother to believe her so badly that she felt twelve years old.
That was dangerous.
She had spent too much of her life shaping sentences around the possibility that Mercer men might approve them.
“Daniel put something in my water.”
Andrew exhaled through his nose.
“You saw him?”
“Richard did.”
“The retired doctor?”
“Yes.”
“He saw Daniel put something in a bottle from across a hotel lobby.”
“Yes.”
“That is not the same as—”
“Lauren saw him give it to me in the garage.”
“Lauren.”
“There’s a message.”
“I saw the message.”
“And?”
“He says there’s context.”
Emily stared at him.
Andrew looked away first.
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth would be nice.”
“The truth is I don’t know what happened.”
“Then say that. Don’t say what Daniel wants and call it uncertainty.”
Andrew’s face reddened.
“I flew into a blizzard because you’re in a hospital.”
“And I’m grateful.”
“You have a funny way of showing it.”
“I’m drugged, Andrew. My manners are off.”
He stood.
For a second Emily thought he would leave.
Instead he walked to the window.
A snowplow crawled through the hospital parking lot below.
“I hate this family,” he said quietly.
Emily almost smiled.
“Which part?”
“The part where every crisis turns into a board meeting.”
That was the most honest thing either of them had said.
Emily leaned back.
“I need you not to tell the board I’m unstable.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Daniel will.”
“He already said you’ve been under extreme stress.”
“There it is.”
Andrew turned.
“Stress is not unstable.”
“It becomes unstable after three phone calls.”
He closed his eyes.
“God.”
Emily watched him.
“Did he tell you about the transfers?”
Andrew opened his eyes.
“What transfers?”
That answer frightened her.
By noon Lauren had brought a laptop, a paper folder, and enough resentment to fill the hospital room without speaking.
She stopped inside the door.
Emily looked at her.
Lauren looked at Emily.
Neither smiled.
Andrew stood near the window.
“This is a bad idea,” he said.
Lauren set the folder on the counter.
“Good morning to you too.”
“You threatened the company.”
“I asked your counsel to preserve records.”
“That is a threat.”
“That is why corporations hire lawyers, Andrew. Everything sounds like a threat when you bill it correctly.”
Emily closed her eyes.
Despite herself, she laughed.
It hurt her head.
Lauren looked at her.
“You look awful.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean medically.”
“Still thank you.”
The tension changed by one degree.
Not forgiveness.
Room temperature.
Lauren opened the folder.
She showed Andrew the transfers.
Two million dollars had moved out of a Mercer Development investment account over six weeks. Then another three million had been pledged as collateral against a loan to a limited partnership called Cobalt Ridge Holdings.
Andrew frowned.
“I’ve seen Cobalt.”
Emily turned.
“You have?”
“It was part of Daniel’s west-slope acquisition strategy.”
“What acquisition?”
Andrew looked between the women.
“The resort corridor properties.”
Lauren sat down.
“There are no resort corridor properties.”
Andrew’s face changed.
Lauren opened her laptop.
“Cobalt Ridge owns one thing. A development parcel outside Moab acquired eighteen months ago through another partnership. The project stalled. Their construction lender pulled out. Daniel personally guaranteed part of the debt.”
Andrew shook his head.
“No.”
“I have the filings.”
“No, I mean Daniel wouldn’t personally guarantee—”
“He did.”
Emily looked at Lauren.
“How do you know?”
“I found the guarantee in a lender diligence folder I still had access to after I was fired.”
“You kept access?”
“For eleven days. Apparently Daniel is better at poisoning water than terminating cloud permissions.”
Andrew flinched.
“Can we not say things like that before we know?”
Lauren’s expression sharpened.
Emily raised a hand.
“Stop.”
Both looked at her.
She hated that they obeyed.
It felt too much like their father’s conference room.
“Keep going,” Emily said.
Lauren did.
Daniel’s Moab project was failing.
He had invested through entities that concealed how much of his own money was exposed. When costs increased and the primary lender demanded additional collateral, he began moving Mercer Development assets behind what looked like routine investment approvals.
Some approvals bore Emily’s signature.
Some used her digital token.
At least one had occurred while she was at the veterinary hospital.
Andrew stared at the screen.
“He has her passwords.”
Lauren looked at him.
“Why does he have her passwords?”
Andrew glanced at Emily.
She felt heat crawl up her neck.
“Because I gave them to him.”
Lauren did not hide her reaction.
Emily looked down.
“After Dad died, I couldn’t keep up. Daniel handled things.”
“How many things?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s the problem.”
“I know.”
Lauren shut her laptop harder than necessary.
“I told you.”
Emily flinched.
Lauren immediately looked ashamed, which somehow made it worse.
“You did,” Emily said.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“No. You did.”
Andrew sat.
For several minutes only the hospital ventilation system made noise.
Then Emily said, “Show me everything.”
The toxicology result came late Monday afternoon.
A sedating prescription medication had been detected in Emily’s blood at a level inconsistent with the medications documented in her medical chart. Preliminary testing of the remaining water from the bottle showed the same class of substance.
Beth delivered the information carefully.
“It supports what you reported.”
“Supports?”
“It is not the entire case.”
Emily had learned to hate that sentence structure.
There was always another qualification.
Another procedure.
May you like
Another person who had to review something.
Yet the delay was beginning to feel less like disbelief and more like the architecture of a world Daniel could not charm into moving faster for him.
