Chương 2
“Lily.”
Daniel swallowed.
“How old are you, Lily?”
“Five.”
Sarah looked away.
He did the arithmetic despite himself.
His vision narrowed.
Five years.
Sarah had died five years and seven months ago.
Or he had believed she had.
“Sarah.”
“Don’t.”
“You were pregnant?”
She pulled Lily closer.
Daniel stood slowly.
“You were pregnant when the garage collapsed?”
“Daniel.”
“Were you?”
Sarah finally met his eyes.
“Yes.”
He stepped backward as though she had pushed him.
Claire watched from the ambulance.
Richard had begun speaking into his phone.
Daniel saw that and something inside him snapped into focus.
He crossed the courtyard.
Richard turned away.
Daniel grabbed the phone from his hand and threw it into the dust.
Both soldiers stiffened.
Richard stared at him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Who were you calling?”
“My attorney.”
“Of course you were.”
“Daniel, this isn’t the place.”
Daniel laughed once, without humor.
“You picked the place five years ago.”
Richard glanced toward the rescuers, the paramedics, the firefighters moving through the courtyard.
“Lower your voice.”
That was the worst thing he could have said.
Daniel stepped closer.
“My dead girlfriend just walked out of a collapsed building with my daughter, and you want me to lower my voice?”
“She was not your girlfriend when the accident happened.”
Daniel stared at him.
Richard’s jaw shifted.
Sarah heard it too.
“Tell him,” she said.
Richard looked at her.
“Sarah, you are injured.”
“Tell him.”
“This is neither the time nor the venue for—”
She laughed softly.
That sound disturbed Daniel more than shouting would have.
“The venue?”
Richard turned to him.
“She accepted money.”
Sarah’s face did not change.
Richard continued.
“She signed an agreement. She left voluntarily.”
Daniel looked at Sarah.
She gave him a tiny nod.
“Yes.”
The answer landed in a different way than denial would have.
“You took money from him?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Daniel,” Claire said from the ambulance.
He looked toward her.
She was sitting on the edge of the gurney now, one paramedic cutting away the side of her shoe.
Claire shook her head.
“Not here.”
Sarah bent and lifted Lily, though the effort made her wince.
Daniel saw the blood on Sarah’s sleeve again.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not mine.”
Lily tightened her arms around Sarah’s neck.
That answer silenced him.
A paramedic came over.
“Ma’am, I need to look at both of you.”
Sarah hesitated.
Daniel expected her to refuse.
Instead she looked down at Lily’s bare foot.
“Her first.”
The paramedic nodded.
“Both of you. Over here.”
Sarah carried Lily toward the second ambulance.
Daniel started to follow.
Sarah stopped.
“No.”
He froze.
She spoke quietly enough that only he could hear.
“You don’t get to become her father because somebody finally told you she exists.”
Daniel’s throat tightened.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
She walked away.
He stayed where he was.
A firefighter passed him carrying a red rescue bag. Another called for a saw. The helicopter settled onto the temporary landing zone, its blades still turning, throwing dust against Daniel’s trousers.
Someone touched his elbow.
Claire.
She had refused the gurney and now stood on one foot with a paramedic supporting her.
“We’re going to County.”
Daniel looked at her ankle.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
She looked toward Sarah.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
Her eyes returned to his face.
“Don’t answer quickly.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
“No.”
Claire studied him.
She had known him for three years and lived with him for eleven months. She knew which lies came easily to him, which ones made him rub his thumb against his wedding finger even though he did not wear a ring yet, and which truths made him stand perfectly still.
He was standing perfectly still.
She nodded once.
“I believe that part.”
“That part?”
“You watched her coffin go into the ground.”
“Yes.”
Claire looked at Richard.
“And your father paid for the funeral.”
Daniel’s stomach turned.
“Yes.”
“Then stay here.”
“You’re injured.”
“My ankle is injured. My judgment is fine.”
The paramedic opened the ambulance door wider.
Claire lowered her voice.
“I’m not asking you to choose between me and a dead woman who isn’t dead. I’m asking you to find out what your father did before he decides what everyone else is allowed to know.”
Daniel stared at her.
Claire climbed into the ambulance.
Before the doors closed, she said, “And Daniel?”
“What?”
“That little girl keeps looking at you.”
He turned.
Lily was.
The ambulance doors shut.
Daniel stood alone between the two vehicles as sirens echoed off the damaged buildings.
He had spent five years believing grief had a fixed shape.
He had been wrong.
By sunset the site had become an investigation.
The collapse had begun shortly after a concrete transfer beam failed beneath the east loading deck of the Mercer redevelopment project, a forty-two-story residential conversion Daniel’s company had acquired from his father’s holding group eighteen months earlier. Thirty-seven workers had been inside or beneath the structure. Most had escaped. Eleven were injured. Two were still missing.
Sarah had not been working there.
That fact reached Daniel twenty minutes after Claire’s ambulance left.
A site security manager found him near the command tent.
“Mr. Mercer?”
Daniel turned.
The man, Perez, held a tablet against his chest.
“There’s a problem with the visitor log.”
Daniel almost laughed at the understatement.
“What problem?”
“The woman who came out with the kid.”
“Sarah.”
“Right. Sarah.”
“What about her?”
“She signed in at eleven fourteen this morning.”
Daniel looked at him.
“The collapse happened at eleven thirty-eight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who was she here to see?”
Perez hesitated.
Daniel looked across the lot.
Richard was speaking to two attorneys beside a black SUV.
“Say it.”
“Your father.”
Daniel felt the day rearrange itself again.
“Was he expecting her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have cameras.”
“We had cameras.”
Daniel turned fully toward him.
May you like
“What does that mean?”
“The local system went down when the structure failed. Off-site backup should have uploaded footage, but IT says the feed stopped about seven minutes before the collapse.”
