Chương 3
“What happens at sunrise?”
“Their lawyers start controlling the story.”
Alvarez picked up her coffee. “They already are.”
She walked away with the uniformed officer before Daniel could ask what she meant.
His phone vibrated in his hand.
Marcus had sent no message, only an address and three photographs.
The first showed Ethan Cole leaving the Gray Room at 9:11 p.m. Ethan was blond, broad-shouldered, and smiling at someone outside the frame.
The second showed Brandon Hale at 9:13, looking back over his shoulder.
The third showed Tyler Whitmore emerging at 9:16 with blood on the cuff of his white shirt.
Below the images, Marcus had written: Working on the fourth.
Daniel stared at Tyler’s cuff.
He did not reply.
When he returned to the trauma bay, Dr. Park was dimming the X-ray screen. Lily’s hand lay open on the blanket. Daniel sat and placed two fingers beneath hers without closing them around her.
She moved first.
A slight curl. Barely pressure.
“I’m here,” he said.
Her breathing caught, then steadied.
He had said those words to her when she was six and woke after dreaming that her mother had died. Claire had been asleep beside him then, warm and irritated at being awakened, her hair across her face. She had come into Lily’s room carrying a glass of water and told them both that death was not allowed before breakfast.
Eight years later, cancer had ignored the rule.
Daniel pressed his thumb against the side of Lily’s index finger. He remembered Claire teaching her to tie her shoes at the kitchen table. Lily had refused to loop the laces the proper way, insisting the rabbit should run around the tree twice because once was “not enough safety.” Claire had laughed until coffee came out of her nose.
The memory arrived because of Lily’s fingers, not because Daniel invited it. It left him with a physical ache beneath his sternum.
Dr. Park checked Lily’s pupils with a small light. “She’ll drift in and out.”
“Can she hear me?”
“Probably.”
Daniel bent closer. “You don’t have to tell me anything else tonight.”
Lily’s eyelids moved.
“I mean it.”
Her fingers twitched against his.
He sat with her until the sky beyond the narrow hallway windows went from black to the dark gray that came before morning. Nurses entered and left. Machines clicked. Someone in another room cursed at a respiratory therapist. A custodian polished the same section of floor twice because Daniel’s chair blocked the easiest route around the bay.
At 4:18 a.m., Marcus arrived.
He wore a charcoal suit without a tie, as though he had dressed in the dark and chosen dignity out of habit. His hair had gone mostly silver at the sides. He carried two coffees and a paper bag darkened by grease.
Daniel met him outside the room.
“You eat?” Marcus asked.
“No.”
Marcus handed him the bag anyway. “Egg sandwich. Terrible. You’ll complain, which counts as living.”
Daniel took the coffee but not the food. “Fourth name.”
“I have three confirmed at the Gray Room. Cole, Hale, Whitmore. All left before nine twenty. Whitmore changed shirts at his apartment at nine forty-six.”
“How do you know?”
“Building lobby footage.”
“Legally?”
Marcus looked offended. “The super owes me.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“You asked for a name, not a deposition.”
Daniel sipped the coffee. It was too sweet. Marcus had remembered how he drank it twenty years ago, before Claire taught him that sugar did not make burnt coffee better.
“Who else was there?” Daniel asked.
“About sixty people. Students, two bartenders, hired security, catering staff. Private guest list had forty-two names. The rest got in through the restaurant or service stairs.”
“The three boys know each other?”
“Same fraternity, though the university doesn’t officially recognize it. Their fathers sit on the foundation board.”
“Of the university?”
Marcus nodded. “Cole’s father runs a commercial real-estate group. Hale’s mother is a state appellate judge. Whitmore’s family owns half the urgent-care centers between here and the county line.”
“Any of them connected to Harker Print?”
“Not yet.”
“Who rented the Gray Room?”
“A nonprofit called the Alden Leadership Initiative.”
Daniel waited.
Marcus’s mouth twisted. “It teaches rich kids how to describe inherited power as public service.”
“Who runs it?”
“Paperwork says a consultant named Simon Drey. No useful history. I’ve got people digging.”
“Lily’s phone?”
“Last tower connection was 9:34 near the river district. It went dark after that.”
“Can you get the records?”
“Not without making noise.”
“Make noise.”
Marcus studied him. “You want me quiet or fast?”
“I want you accurate.”
“That has never been the same thing.”
Daniel glanced through the glass. Dr. Park stood over Lily, speaking to a nurse.
Marcus followed his gaze. “How bad?”
“She’ll live.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Daniel looked at him.
Marcus exhaled. “Sorry.”
For a moment, neither man spoke. Marcus folded the top of the paper bag, unfolded it, then folded it again.
“She looks like Claire,” he said.
“No.”
“A little.”
“Not today.”
Marcus nodded.
A hospital television farther down the corridor showed a morning news anchor standing outside the building. The screen was muted, but the caption beneath her read: DAUGHTER OF CONTROVERSIAL SECURITY EXECUTIVE ATTACKED.
Daniel walked toward it.
The story changed to a photograph taken years earlier outside a federal courthouse. Daniel was in his thirties, broader in the shoulders, his hair longer, tattoos visible above an open collar. Marcus stood behind him. Both men were leaving after testifying before a grand jury that never produced public charges.
The caption changed: DANIEL “GHOST” WALKER’S VIOLENT PAST RESURFACES.
Marcus swore quietly.
Daniel reached up and turned off the television.
“That was fast,” Marcus said.
“Alvarez said the story was already moving.”
“You think she leaked it?”
“No.”
“Then one of the families did.”
Daniel looked at the blank screen. “They’re making me the story before Lily can speak.”
Marcus’s face hardened. “Let me handle it.”
“How?”
May you like
“The way we handle media pressure.”
“You threaten a producer?”
