Chương 2
“That’s what you want to start with?”
Her mouth trembled once. She pressed her lips together.
“No.”
“Then start where he was alive.”
Richard said, “She’s in no condition for this.”
Daniel turned on him. “You put her on a stretcher.”
“I put her under medical supervision.”
“You were flying her out of the state.”
“To a treatment facility.”
“I didn’t agree to go,” Emily said.
Richard’s jaw tightened.
Daniel looked from one to the other.
“What treatment facility?”
“Daniel,” Richard said, “your wife swallowed enough clonazepam to lose consciousness this afternoon.”
Daniel looked at Emily.
She stared at the blanket.
He had found her at their house a little after six. She had been sitting on the laundry-room floor with one shoe on, unable to answer a simple question about what day it was. Richard’s people had arrived eleven minutes after Daniel called Emily’s former physician—the number was already in her phone under emergency contacts—and Daniel had been too frightened to ask why a private medical team had appeared faster than county paramedics could have.
He had ridden in the SUV because they told him the aircraft had equipment better suited to her condition.
Then, twenty minutes into the drive, Emily had become lucid enough to realize where they were going.
She had grabbed his jacket.
Not the hospital.
That was all she managed.
Daniel had demanded they stop.
They had not.
At the hangar, he had forced the rear door open before the SUV fully settled into park.
Richard had been waiting.
Now Daniel looked at Emily’s pupils, at the sluggish way her eyes followed him.
“You took pills?”
“Two.”
Richard gave a quiet laugh with no humor in it.
Emily looked at him. “I took two.”
“The toxicology screen says otherwise.”
“What toxicology screen?” Daniel asked.
Richard nodded toward the medical equipment. “Finger-stick preliminary test.”
Emily shook her head.
“I took two. I know how many I took.”
She had worked critical care for eleven years before leaving nursing two years earlier. Daniel had never known her to confuse medication. She alphabetized spices only because, she claimed, labels were a form of civilization. She once made Daniel pull over on the interstate because she could not remember whether she had turned off a curling iron she did not even own.
Anxious did not mean careless.
Daniel looked at the IV line taped to her hand.
“What did they give you?”
Emily’s face changed.
The older guard looked down.
Daniel moved closer to the stretcher.
“What did they give you in the car?”
“I don’t know.”
Richard said, “A standard sedative dose because she was agitated.”
Emily’s head turned toward him.
“I said no.”
“You were trying to climb out of a moving vehicle.”
“I was trying to get away from you.”
The portable monitor kept beeping.
Daniel pulled out his phone.
Richard said, “What are you doing?”
“Calling 911.”
“There’s almost no service in this hangar during storms.”
Daniel looked at the screen.
One bar.
He dialed anyway.
The call failed before connecting.
Richard’s mouth tightened.
Daniel tried again.
This time it rang once, broke apart in static, and dropped.
“Open the hangar doors,” Daniel said.
Neither guard moved.
Richard’s face became almost tired.
“Daniel, stop treating every person in this building as if we’re kidnapping your wife.”
“What would you call taking someone onto a plane after she said no?”
“A medical emergency complicated by panic.”
Emily laughed once.
It was a strange, weak little sound.
Her father looked at her.
She said, “You always did have clean words for dirty things.”
Richard’s expression hardened.
Daniel had heard Emily insult her father before. Usually the insults were witty, delivered after two glasses of wine and followed by guilt she pretended not to feel.
This was different.
There was history in it.
Daniel looked again at Owen’s manifest.
At the bottom of the page were two signatures.
One belonged to Emily.
The other belonged to Richard.
Between them was a handwritten departure time: 11:42 p.m.
Daniel knew Owen’s official time of death.
11:17.
He had seen it on the death certificate so often he could picture the numbers without closing his eyes.
His brother had supposedly collapsed alone in a rented hangar bathroom at 10:51, been discovered shortly after eleven, received emergency treatment, and died before transport.
So why was Owen’s handwriting on a medical-flight manifest twenty-five minutes after his recorded death?
Daniel touched the ink.
It smeared faintly.
Not fresh. Just old paper against damp fingers.
“Was he alive at eleven forty-two?”
Emily stared at him.
Richard said, “No.”
Daniel looked at him.
Richard stepped closer.
“Owen was dead before eleven thirty.”
“Then why does this exist?”
“Because the timeline was altered.”
“By her?”
Richard looked at Emily.
“Yes.”
Emily’s eyes filled, but she did not cry.
Daniel hated that he noticed.
He hated that a part of him still wanted to protect her from whatever came next.
“What did you change?”
Emily took a shallow breath.
“I changed when the flight was logged.”
“Why?”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
She looked toward her father.
Daniel followed her gaze.
Richard said nothing.
The rain intensified, rattling against the glass so violently it sounded like gravel.
Daniel waited.
Emily swallowed.
“Of losing everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“My license. My job. You.”
“Why would you lose me?”
She stared at him long enough that his stomach tightened.
“Because Owen called me that night.”
Daniel stopped breathing for a moment.
Owen’s phone records had shown several outgoing calls before he died. The police told Daniel most went unanswered. One had lasted eight minutes.
The number was listed as belonging to Whitmore Medical Air’s corporate operations desk.
Emily had told Daniel she was at home that night.
She had told him she found out about Owen after midnight.
“You talked to him?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Seven minutes. Eight.”
“What did he say?”
“Daniel—”
“What did my brother say to you?”
May you like
“He said he’d screwed up.”
A memory arrived without invitation.
