Chương 4
His eyes found Claire.
Relief moved across his face.
It looked real.
That frightened her more than if it had looked fake.
“Claire.”
She ended the call.
Gavin stepped inside.
“Jesus Christ.”
He did not hug her.
He had never been a man who hugged people unnecessarily.
“I just heard about the door.”
Claire felt something inside her become very still.
Daniel appeared behind him.
Daniel heard it too.
The change in his expression was tiny.
But it was there.
Claire said, “Who told you about the door?”
Gavin stopped.
The hospital room seemed suddenly too small for four people.
A deputy stood behind Daniel in the hall.
Gavin glanced at him.
“Your mother.”
Daniel said nothing.
Claire asked, “Who told Evelyn?”
“Security.”
“What security?”
“Claire, we have an aircraft down on private land. The tracking alert went out. Walter called operations.”
“Walter called emergency services.”
“He called operations too.”
“No,” Daniel said.
Everyone looked at him.
Daniel’s voice was quiet.
“Walter didn’t call them.”
Gavin’s eyes moved toward him.
Daniel continued.
“I asked him.”
For the first time, Gavin looked uncertain.
It lasted perhaps half a second.
“The emergency beacon, then.”
“An emergency beacon told you the door opened?”
Gavin’s jaw flexed.
Claire felt her heartbeat in the bruised part of her arm.
The deputy stepped forward.
“Mr. Mercer, I’m going to ask everyone to stop discussing the incident for now.”
Gavin nodded at once.
“Of course.”
He looked at Claire.
“I came because Evelyn was terrified.”
“Evelyn doesn’t get terrified.”
“Today she did.”
“That must have been difficult for her.”
Gavin glanced toward Daniel.
A mistake.
A small one.
But Claire had spent enough years listening to people lie about numbers to recognize the moment someone checked another person’s face for guidance.
Daniel saw it too.
Claire knew because his shoulders changed.
“Why are you here?” Daniel asked.
Gavin frowned. “I just told you.”
“No. Why are you personally here?”
“Daniel.”
“Who sent you?”
“Your mother.”
Daniel stared at him.
Gavin lowered his voice.
“You almost died.”
“So did Claire.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Were you?”
The deputy interrupted.
“That’s enough.”
Gavin gave him a polite nod.
Then he said something Claire would remember later, not because it was dramatic but because it was ordinary.
“I parked in the fifteen-minute zone. I should move the car.”
He left.
Claire sat on the edge of the bed.
Daniel stayed in the doorway.
They looked at one another.
Neither spoke for several seconds.
Finally Claire said, “Tell me what you know.”
Daniel rubbed the cut across his knuckles.
“I don’t know what happened to the helicopter.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I know.”
“Then answer it.”
The deputy shifted behind him.
Daniel looked at the man, then back at Claire.
“I need a lawyer.”
Claire laughed once.
It escaped before she could stop it.
Daniel’s face tightened.
“That tells me a lot.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“You nearly watched me fall into the Pacific, and your next move is a lawyer.”
“My next move is not making this worse.”
“For who?”
He did not answer.
Claire nodded.
“Right.”
She stood.
Daniel stepped aside.
“Claire.”
She walked past him.
“Claire, please.”
She stopped in the hallway.
People moved around them. Nurses, visitors, someone carrying flowers wrapped in crinkled plastic. A television in a waiting area showed a baseball game with the sound off.
Daniel stayed several feet away.
She said, “You have one chance to tell me something before I start assuming the worst.”
He looked tired suddenly.
Not wealthy. Not powerful.
Just tired.
“I asked Gavin to restrict your access to the company system.”
Claire stared at him.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
The hallway noise became strangely clear.
A cart wheel squeaked.
Someone laughed at the nurses’ station.
“Why?”
“Because you were pulling files you weren’t authorized to have.”
“I’m a foundation director.”
“You were in corporate records.”
“Because corporate money moved through a foundation account.”
“I know.”
“You told me you didn’t know about Westmere.”
“I didn’t know what it was.”
“But you knew enough to shut me out.”
Daniel looked away.
Claire waited.
He said, “I knew enough to be scared.”
“Of me?”
“No.”
“Then of what?”
He lowered his voice.
“My father used Westmere.”
Claire stopped breathing for a second.
Richard Bennett had been dead four years.
Publicly, he remained almost embarrassingly revered. Founder of the Bennett Group. Self-made industrial developer. Scholarship donor. Hospital wing. Smiling photographs in every corporate lobby.
Privately, he had been more complicated.
Claire had liked him anyway.
That bothered her now.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Then why restrict me?”
“Because if there was something buried in those files, I didn’t want you stumbling into it before I understood what it was.”
Claire looked at him.
“That sentence is your entire family in one breath.”
Daniel flinched.
Good.
She wanted him to.
Then she hated that she wanted it.
He said, “I told Gavin to lock your account until I could review the records.”
“And Gavin knew I was meeting Nora.”
Daniel’s silence answered.
Claire nodded.
“You told him.”
“I told him you were considering outside counsel.”
“You told the CFO that I found suspicious payments involving the CFO.”
“I didn’t know they involved Gavin.”
“His job involves the money, Daniel.”
“I know how that sounds.”
“No. You know how it is.”
She started walking.
Daniel followed once.
The deputy said his name.
Daniel stopped.
Claire did not look back.
She spent that night in a hotel room registered under Nora’s name.
Nora drove up from Santa Barbara after abandoning the conference and complaining for nearly the entire trip about rental-car lane-assist technology.
It was exactly the kind of useless irritation Claire needed.
At eleven thirty, they ate crackers and peanut butter from the hotel gift shop because Claire could not tolerate anything else.
Nora sat cross-legged on the second bed in gray sweatpants she had bought at a pharmacy.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Thanks.”
May you like
“I mean medically.”
“Still thanks.”
