Chương 3
“Seven minutes.”
“Yes.”
“Coincidence?”
Perez looked uncomfortable.
“I’m security. Not engineering.”
“What entrance did she use?”
“South lobby.”
“And where did she go?”
“That’s the part I’m trying to tell you.”
Perez opened the tablet.
Sarah’s name appeared on the digital sign-in record.
SARAH KEENE.
Visitor.
11:14:07.
Host: RICHARD MERCER.
Destination: LEVEL B2 ARCHIVE / SERVICE ACCESS.
Daniel stared at the last line.
Level B2.
The garage collapse five years earlier had occurred on Level B2 of a different Mercer property.
“What archive?”
Perez shook his head.
“There shouldn’t be one.”
Daniel looked at him.
“The building plans show mechanical storage down there. No occupied records room.”
“Who changed the destination in the visitor system?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you tell?”
“IT might.”
“Don’t send it to my father’s people.”
Perez’s face tightened.
“He owns the security contractor.”
“Not anymore.”
“He does, technically.”
Daniel looked toward Richard again.
His father was watching him.
Daniel lowered his voice.
“Make a copy. Personal device if you have to. Then send it to the city investigator when they arrive.”
Perez hesitated.
Daniel understood the hesitation. People with mortgages did not become whistleblowers because a wealthy man had a crisis of conscience.
“You won’t lose your job,” Daniel said.
Perez gave him a tired look.
“People say that right before somebody loses their job.”
“Fair.”
For the first time all day, Daniel nearly smiled.
Perez did not.
Daniel took out his phone.
“I’ll put it in writing.”
“That helps.”
Daniel wrote the message and sent it to Perez’s work email, personal email, and himself.
As he finished, Richard approached.
“Daniel.”
Perez stepped away.
Richard waited until they were alone.
“What did he tell you?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
Richard’s mouth thinned.
“Don’t be childish.”
Daniel looked at the dust on his father’s expensive jacket.
“When did you find Sarah alive?”
Richard glanced at the emergency workers around them.
“Come with me.”
“No.”
“Daniel.”
“We can talk right here.”
Richard’s eyes hardened.
“That is not wise.”
“Neither was buying a coffin.”
A firefighter walking past turned his head.
Richard lowered his voice.
“It was not empty.”
Daniel’s skin went cold.
“What?”
“There was a body.”
For a moment the world lost sound.
Daniel stared at him.
“Whose?”
Richard looked away.
“I did not know her name.”
Daniel grabbed the front of his father’s jacket.
Two soldiers moved instinctively in their direction.
Richard did not resist.
“Take your hands off me.”
“You put a stranger in Sarah’s grave?”
“Daniel.”
“You let me bury somebody else?”
“It was handled by people who said identification had become unreliable.”
“People you paid.”
“Yes.”
Daniel released him.
Richard straightened his jacket.
“You want the truth? Then stop acting like a boy long enough to hear it.”
“My daughter is five years old.”
“I am aware.”
The words came too quickly.
Daniel stared.
Richard realized it.
There it was.
Not suspicion.
Not inference.
Knowledge.
“You knew about Lily.”
Richard closed his eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
Daniel hit him.
It was not like Sarah’s slap.
There was nothing dramatic or clean about it. Daniel’s fist caught his father partly on the jaw and partly on the cheek. Richard stumbled sideways, lost his balance on rubble, and went down to one knee.
A soldier stepped between them.
“Sir!”
Daniel backed away immediately, breathing hard.
Richard touched his mouth.
Blood appeared on his thumb.
He looked more offended than hurt.
“Feel better?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Richard stood.
The soldier kept one arm extended between them.
Daniel pointed at his father.
“If you leave this site before investigators talk to you, I will personally give them every internal company record I can access.”
Richard wiped his mouth.
“You think you have access.”
Daniel went still.
Richard saw he had said too much again.
A siren approached from the road.
City structural investigators.
State police behind them.
Richard looked toward the vehicles.
“Your problem,” he said quietly, “is that you still believe this is about me keeping you away from a woman I disliked.”
“What is it about?”
Richard looked at Sarah’s ambulance.
Then back at Daniel.
“Ask her what she was carrying when she came here today.”
Daniel turned.
The ambulance was gone.
Sarah had been taken to County with Lily fifteen minutes earlier.
Richard walked away before Daniel could stop him.
County Memorial kept Sarah and Lily on separate charts but in the same room because Lily would not let go of her mother.
Sarah had a deep laceration on her arm, two bruised ribs, dehydration, and a mild concussion. Lily had cuts on both feet, a bruised shoulder, and no fractures.
Daniel learned this from a nurse who told him he was not listed as family.
“I’m her father.”
The nurse looked at the chart.
“Not according to anything we have.”
“I just found out.”
The nurse paused.
She had probably heard stranger things.
“That doesn’t change who can receive information.”
“I understand.”
He did not.
Not emotionally.
Procedurally, yes.
He understood perfectly.
He sat down outside the treatment area.
Across the corridor, a vending machine hummed.
A janitor pushed a mop past him.
Someone’s phone played a game at full volume until a woman snapped, “Turn that down.”
Daniel looked at his hands.
There was dried blood across the knuckles of his right hand.
His father’s.
A security guard approached.
“Mr. Mercer?”
Daniel stood.
“You have a visitor.”
Claire came around the corner on crutches.
Her ankle was in a black walking boot now.
“You were supposed to be discharged home,” Daniel said.
“I was.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I live with you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
She sat beside him.
For almost a minute neither spoke.
Claire adjusted the Velcro strap on the boot.
Finally she said, “I called my sister.”
Daniel looked at her.
“I told her the wedding might be off.”
He stared at the floor.
“Claire.”
“I said might.”
“I’m sorry.”
May you like
“Don’t apologize yet. We don’t know what you’re apologizing for.”
“I brought you into this.”
