Chương 6
“Do you understand where you are?”
One blink.
“Do you know your parents are here?”
One blink.
“Are you in severe pain?”
One blink.
Priya adjusted the questions until a nurse increased Lily’s medication.
Daniel stood near the window, obeying Soto’s instruction even though every part of him wanted answers.
Lily shifted her gaze toward him and moved her fingers.
Two fingers.
I see you.
He returned the signal.
Later, when Karen went downstairs to call her husband, Lily tapped the edge of the letter board.
Priya brought it closer.
“Do you want to spell something?”
One blink.
Her hand trembled as she pointed.
D.
Then O.
Then N.
The fourth letter took almost a minute.
T.
Daniel’s chest tightened.
DON’T.
Lily rested. Her pulse had risen. Priya asked whether she wanted to stop.
Two blinks.
She continued.
T.
R.
U.
S.
T.
Daniel moved closer before remembering himself.
“Let her finish,” Priya said.
Lily’s finger drifted downward.
C.
A.
M.
P.
She missed the next letter and struck the board with her knuckle. A sound of frustration escaped her throat. Priya steadied the board.
U.
S.
DON’T TRUST CAMPUS.
Lily’s hand dropped.
“Campus security?” Daniel asked.
Priya looked sharply at him, but Lily blinked once.
“Wade Rusk?”
Lily’s breathing quickened.
Priya removed the board. “That’s enough.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Daniel,” Karen said from the doorway.
Lily shut her eye.
Priya called the nurse.
Daniel backed away, shame arriving beneath his anger. He had taken the first words his daughter managed after surgery and turned them into an interview.
Karen waited until Lily slept.
“You lasted almost eight hours,” she said.
“I asked one question.”
“You asked three.”
“She was trying to warn us.”
“She was trying to communicate. There’s a difference.”
“Not tonight there isn’t.”
Karen stared at him, then lowered her voice. “You cannot make her recovery useful to you.”
“Useful?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, explain it.”
“You’re terrified, and you have a thing you can do now. Investigate. Organize. Push people. That feels better than sitting here.”
“Should I sit here while the university erases evidence?”
“No. You should let the police work and be her father.”
“I can do both.”
“You never could.”
The words remained between them.
Daniel walked out before he said something cruel. In the hallway, he nearly collided with a young man carrying flowers wrapped in grocery-store plastic. The man recognized the room number and stopped.
“Is Lily awake?”
“Who are you?”
“Jonah Price. I work with her.”
“In the Vale lab?”
Jonah looked at the uniform, then at Daniel’s face. “Yes.”
He was twenty-six or twenty-seven, with a beard he had trimmed unevenly and glasses fogged from the rain. The flowers were yellow daisies, already browning at the edges.
“What did Lily find in the lab?”
Jonah’s grip tightened around the stems.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“She found altered test data.”
“Who told you that?”
“Did Grant Ellison alter it?”
Jonah glanced down the hallway.
“I should go.”
Daniel stepped in front of him. “Were you at Carver last night?”
“No.”
“Did you know Lily was meeting campus security?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone she had evidence?”
“I said I should go.”
Jonah tried to move around him. Daniel caught his arm.
The flowers struck the wall. Water dripped from the plastic onto the floor.
“Take your hand off me,” Jonah said.
“Answer me.”
“Daniel.”
Detective Soto stood at the end of the hallway.
She walked toward them without hurrying. Jonah’s face changed with relief.
Daniel released him.
Soto asked Jonah to wait near the nurses’ station, then pointed Daniel toward an empty family room.
Inside, a muted television displayed an afternoon cooking show. Someone had left a half-completed crossword puzzle on the table.
“You promised not to confront anyone,” Soto said.
“He came to my daughter’s room.”
“And you grabbed him in a hospital hallway.”
“He knows something.”
“Probably. Now he also knows you’re volatile.”
“I’m not volatile.”
Soto looked through the glass at the crushed flowers.
Daniel sat down.
“I shouldn’t have touched him.”
“No.”
“Did you find Rusk?”
“Not yet. His wife says he did not come home. His personal vehicle is missing.”
“Run his phone.”
“It’s off.”
“Bank cards?”
“We’re doing police work, Colonel.”
He looked at the television. A woman was folding butter into dough.
Soto sat across from him. “The campus camera system did not reboot because of the storm.”
“What happened?”
“Someone logged into the network console and manually disabled recording for Carver.”
“Rusk?”
“His credentials were used.”
“There.”
“Credentials can be shared or stolen.”
“His badge was in Lily’s pocket.”
“Part of it.”
“He fled.”
“He may be frightened because he witnessed an assault. He may have helped cover one up. He may have committed it. Those are different cases.”
Daniel rubbed both hands over his face.
Soto continued. “Your daughter’s phone last connected to the campus network at eleven twenty-six. It has not connected since. Her account shows a text message from a number registered to a prepaid service. The content is gone from the provider’s available records.”
“Deleted?”
“Not stored in plain text. We may recover it from a device if we find one.”
“Tessa’s phone has a picture.”
“I have it. She restored the deleted image before calling me.”
Daniel looked up.
“I told her not to touch anything.”
“She panicked and restored it.”
“Can you use it?”
“It shows a sample container labeled Aegis Batch Seven. It also says not for human application.”
“What is Aegis?”
“A polymer sealant developed in Simon Vale’s lab. Bradley announced a licensing agreement with Hawthorne Biologics six weeks ago.”
“Money.”
“Potentially a great deal.”
“And Lily found it wasn’t safe.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Why else change the data?”
“We don’t know that the data was changed.”
“Tessa saw different numbers.”
“Tessa is an English major who admits she did not understand what she saw.”
May you like
Daniel leaned forward. “You believe her.”
“I believe she saw something that frightened Lily.”
