Chương 5
Daniel stared at her.
“Owen found fraud.”
“Yes.”
“Why was Owen looking?”
“He wasn’t supposed to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“He was having money problems.”
Daniel leaned back.
There it was.
Something ugly and recognizable.
Owen had always had money problems. Not tragic ones. Stupid ones. Credit cards, sports bets he called “friendly action,” a motorcycle loan at an interest rate Daniel had mocked for three straight months.
“What did he do?”
“He copied files.”
“To report them?”
Emily hesitated.
Daniel laughed quietly.
“Of course.”
“He told Richard he wanted fifty thousand dollars.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“For what?”
“To stay quiet.”
Daniel looked away.
The renovation show was visible through a gap in the curtain. Somebody on television was pointing happily at a kitchen island.
“Owen blackmailed your father.”
“He said he was going to.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
Daniel rubbed his mouth.
A familiar anger rose, but it had nowhere clean to go.
Owen had been dead fourteen months. Daniel had polished him into a better man because grief liked simple shapes.
He remembered the debts. The lies about debts. The time Owen borrowed three thousand dollars from their mother and told Daniel she had offered it.
He remembered loving him anyway.
“What did Richard do?”
“He told Owen to meet him at the hangar.”
“You were there?”
“Not at first.”
“Why did you go?”
“Owen called me.”
“You already said that.”
“He called again.”
Her voice broke slightly.
“After he met Richard.”
Daniel looked at her.
“What happened?”
“He said he was scared.”
“Of Richard?”
“I thought so.”
“You thought?”
“He wasn’t making sense.”
Emily pulled the blanket higher though the room was warm.
“He said, ‘I took the wrong thing.’”
Daniel stared.
“What thing?”
“A medication vial.”
Daniel glanced toward the curtain.
“Why?”
“He wanted proof.”
“Proof of billing fraud is a medication vial?”
“No. There was another issue.”
He almost stood again.
Emily lifted her hand.
“I’m telling you.”
“Then tell me.”
“Controlled medication had been disappearing from the flight kits. Not enough to trigger an obvious shortage because the inventory logs were being corrected afterward. Owen had found discrepancies. He thought Richard knew.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And Richard thought one of the flight nurses was stealing.”
“Who was?”
Emily looked at him.
“Owen.”
Daniel said nothing.
“He’d been taking fentanyl vials from returned kits.”
The sentence did not fit his brother.
Which was exactly why Daniel knew, somewhere under the first reflex of denial, that it might be true.
Owen had hurt his back six months before he died. A fall from a maintenance ladder. He was prescribed pain medication briefly. Daniel remembered him complaining when the prescription ended.
He remembered Owen sweating through Thanksgiving dinner.
He remembered asking whether he had the flu.
“He used fentanyl?”
“I don’t know how often.”
“You knew this fourteen months ago?”
“Not before that night.”
Daniel stood.
Emily flinched.
He saw it and hated himself for causing it.
He walked to the sink instead.
There was a stack of paper cups. He filled one with water and drank half, though he was not thirsty.
“Owen stole fentanyl,” he said.
“Yes.”
“He blackmailed Richard.”
“Yes.”
“He called you.”
“Yes.”
“And you went to the hangar.”
“Yes.”
Daniel crushed the paper cup slightly in his hand.
“What happened when you got there?”
Emily watched him.
“He was on the floor beside the medical cabinet.”
Daniel’s fingers stopped.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“How alive?”
“Daniel.”
“Answer me.”
“Barely.”
She looked sick now in a way that had nothing to do with medication.
“He’d injected something. I found the syringe.”
“Fentanyl?”
“I thought so.”
“But?”
“The vial beside him was not fentanyl.”
Daniel slowly sat.
“What was it?”
“Midazolam.”
The same drug the transport medic had given Emily that night.
His eyes went to her IV.
She noticed.
“That’s why I panicked in the SUV.”
Daniel waited.
Emily breathed through her nose.
“The vials looked similar in the old flight kits. Same manufacturer, same size. Different labels. Owen was already impaired. He took the wrong one.”
“Would that kill him?”
“By itself? Maybe not at the amount we think he used. But he also had an opioid in his system.”
“You said you didn’t know how often he used fentanyl.”
“I didn’t. Toxicology later showed it.”
“Official toxicology?”
“No.”
Daniel’s head lifted.
Emily looked at him.
“The official report didn’t.”
The room became very quiet.
“Why?”
“Because the blood sample was switched.”
Daniel stared.
“By who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Emily.”
“I don’t know who physically did it.”
“Who ordered it?”
Her silence was answer enough.
Daniel looked toward the door.
“Your father.”
“He told me Owen’s death would destroy the company if it came out that narcotics were being stolen from flight kits and inventory records had been falsified. He said the FBI would tear everything apart. Licenses, contracts, employees. He said I would lose my nursing license because I had previously signed some of the inventory sheets.”
“Had you?”
“Yes.”
“Were they false?”
“Not when I signed them. They were altered afterward.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel laughed once.
She looked hurt.
He did not apologize.
“What did you do?”
Emily stared at the pulse oximeter clipped to her finger.
“When I got there, Owen was breathing. Badly. Slow. I opened his airway. I gave oxygen. I called the company’s on-call medical director.”
“Why didn’t you call 911?”
Her eyes filled.
Daniel felt the answer before she spoke.
“Richard told me not to.”
He stood again.
This time she let him.
“He was there?”
“He arrived two or three minutes after me.”
“And you listened to him?”
“I thought we had time.”
Daniel turned.
“What?”
“I thought we had time.”
Her tears slipped silently now.
“He said if we called county EMS, police would come automatically because controlled drugs were involved. He said use the company medical team. They were eight minutes away.”
“How long did they take?”
“Twelve.”
May you like
“How long until someone gave Owen naloxone?”
“Daniel—”
