Chương 2
“You reached for her before you asked what she heard.”
“I reached for a frightened child holding a phone.”
“No.” Nathan looked at her. “You reached for the phone.”
James spoke from behind them.
“Hospital security has been notified. They’re contacting Mrs. Cole’s attending physician now.”
Nathan nodded once.
“Car.”
“Ready in two minutes.”
Victoria folded her arms.
“You’re leaving me here?”
Nathan almost laughed.
It frightened him that he wanted to.
“You can leave whenever you want.”
Her expression shifted.
“You’re not detaining me?”
“I’m not the police.”
“Good.”
“But your building access is terminated. Your Cole Meridian credentials are suspended. Your company devices stay here.”
She stared at him.
“You cannot do that without—”
“I can suspend executive access pending a security review.”
“You know what this will look like.”
For the first time that night, Nathan felt something familiar.
Business.
Rules.
Authority.
A system he understood.
It lasted perhaps half a second before Emma pressed both arms around his waist.
Nathan looked down.
Her ponytails were coming loose. One bare foot was wet with spilled tea.
He crouched.
“Did she hurt you?”
Emma shook her head.
“Did anyone hurt you?”
Another shake.
“What did you record?”
Emma wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“She was in the little room by the windows.”
“The morning room?”
Emma nodded.
“I went down because Mom called. Mom told me not to wake you.”
Nathan glanced at the phone.
“Why?”
“She said you’d make everybody come in.”
The answer was so Claire that it almost knocked the anger out of him.
Even injured, frightened, and apparently convinced someone was trying to kill her, Claire had known her husband would respond by assembling professionals until the room became unlivable.
Emma continued.
“Mom said she heard Victoria at the hospital before. Then Victoria came home, and I heard her talking.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say?”
Emma’s eyes moved toward Victoria.
Victoria stayed very still.
Emma whispered, “She said, ‘She was supposed to be gone before midnight.’”
Nathan looked at Victoria.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
Emma stabbed at the screen.
“I recorded it.”
Victoria inhaled slowly through her nose.
Nathan pressed play.
At first there was only the sound of fabric rubbing against the microphone and Emma’s breathing.
Then Victoria’s voice.
Farther away.
Tight.
Impatient.
“She was supposed to be gone before midnight.”
A man answered.
His words were mostly lost beneath the hum of the air-conditioning system.
Victoria said, “I don’t care what happened. Fix it.”
The man said something else.
One word came through clearly.
Nathan.
Victoria replied, “No. He doesn’t know.”
The recording stopped.
Nathan played it again.
The second time, he noticed something else.
Three faint electronic beeps from Emma’s phone during the recording.
Claire had still been on the video call.
She had heard it too.
Nathan handed the phone to James.
“Copy everything.”
James removed one glove before taking it.
Victoria shook her head.
“You’re treating a child’s partial recording like a confession.”
“No,” Nathan said. “I’m treating your reaction like information.”
“You don’t know what that conversation was about.”
“Then tell me.”
She hesitated.
It wasn’t long.
Nathan had negotiated billion-dollar contracts with people who hesitated longer before asking for sparkling water.
But Victoria was usually better than this.
“It was private.”
Nathan looked at the shattered cup on the floor.
“My wife is in a hospital telling my daughter someone changed her medication. Private is over.”
Victoria’s jaw hardened.
“Then call your lawyers.”
“I will.”
“You should call them before you destroy your company because Claire is confused after a brain injury.”
Emma began crying harder.
Nathan stood so quickly that Victoria stepped back.
James moved between them without making it obvious.
Nathan lowered his voice.
“You don’t say that about her again in front of Emma.”
Victoria glanced at the girl.
For one strange moment she looked ashamed.
Then it disappeared.
Nathan took Emma upstairs himself.
She would not let the housekeeper touch her.
She would not put on shoes until Nathan found the blue sneakers with silver laces she had worn to school the previous Friday. She sat on the edge of her bed while he tied them, gripping the sleeve of his jacket every time he moved too far away.
Her room looked offensively normal.
A half-finished solar-system model rested on the desk. Three glow-in-the-dark stars had fallen from the ceiling and lay beside a stack of library books. One drawer would not close because Emma had stuffed two sweaters inside without folding them.
Nathan pushed at the drawer automatically.
It jammed again.
Emma watched him.
“Dad.”
He stopped.
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t believe me at first.”
Nathan looked at her.
There were moments in business when the correct answer mattered more than the immediate comfort of the person asking the question.
He had spent most of his adult life becoming extremely good at those moments.
This was not one of them.
“I didn’t understand yet.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
She waited.
Nathan sat beside her.
“I believe that you heard what you heard.”
“Do you believe Mom?”
He looked toward the bedroom door.
From downstairs came the muted sound of men speaking into radios.
“I believe your mom is scared.”
Emma’s face tightened.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Seven years old.
Nathan had the absurd thought that he should be proud of the precision.
Instead he felt tired all the way into his teeth.
“I don’t know everything yet,” he said. “But I believe something is wrong, and I’m going to find out what.”
Emma stared at the carpet.
“Mom said Daniel.”
“I heard her.”
“Who is he?”
Nathan’s fingers tightened around the silver watch on his wrist.
“A man I used to work with.”
“Is he bad?”
Nathan almost said yes.
The word would have been easy.
That was probably why he didn’t trust it.
“He did some bad things.”
“To you?”
Nathan looked at his daughter.
May you like
“To a lot of people.”
Emma slid off the bed.
