Chapter 4 - The Man Behind the Door
The stairwell door opened three inches.
I pushed Emily behind the concrete pillar.
A hand appeared around the edge.
Then a familiar voice said, “Don’t run.”
Detective Alvarez stepped through.
Emily nearly collapsed.
“Detective?”
Alvarez looked furious.
“What part of ‘do not confront him’ sounded optional?”
Emily showed her the photograph.
Alvarez’s anger disappeared.
“Someone sent this just now?”
“Yes.”
Alvarez immediately called officers.
Pierce and Marcus were gone.
Security cameras in the garage had been disabled for eleven minutes.
Exactly the period we were there.
Someone had known.
Someone had watched.
Alvarez drove us to the precinct.
For two hours, we gave statements.
Emily repeated the conversation between Pierce and Marcus.
I confirmed it.
But we had no recording.
No witnesses.
No physical evidence.
“You understand the problem,” Alvarez said.
“They’ll deny everything.”
Emily crossed her arms.
“So we do nothing?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Alvarez opened a folder.
Lucas Moreno wasn’t the first suspicious case connected to St. Catherine.
Six months earlier, an accountant named Peter Sloan had been admitted after being struck by a vehicle.
Sloan worked for NorthStar Medical Holdings, the company that owned a major stake in St. Catherine.
He died during surgery.
Marcus Vale had operated.
“Are you saying Marcus killed him?” Emily asked.
“No.”
Alvarez turned a page.
“But Sloan had contacted federal investigators two days before his accident.”
“About what?”
“Billing fraud.”
St. Catherine and several affiliated clinics were suspected of submitting inflated insurance claims.
Millions of dollars.
Possibly tens of millions.
Jonathan Pierce oversaw financial operations during part of that period.
Emily went silent.
“What does Lucas have to do with it?” I asked.
“We don’t know.”
Alvarez showed us another photograph.
Lucas worked part-time delivering food.
The night of the crash, he had made a delivery to a private residence.
The home belonged to Jonathan Pierce.
“He saw something,” Emily said.
“Maybe.”
“Or someone.”
Alvarez nodded.
My phone buzzed.
Ryan.
I ignored it.
He called again.
Then again.
I answered.
“What?”
“Daniel, where are you?”
“Police station.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain.”
“No, you need to come to the office.”
“Ryan—”
“Now.”
Something in his voice stopped me.
“What happened?”
“Our servers were breached.”
My stomach tightened.
“What was accessed?”
“Vehicle records.”
I looked at Emily.
“What records?”
“Yours.”
The room seemed suddenly smaller.
“Anything else?”
“Employee addresses.”
“Ryan, leave the office.”
“What?”
“Get everyone out.”
“Daniel—”
“Now.”
Alvarez heard enough.
She dispatched officers.
Our company was evacuated.
No explosive.
No intruder.
But somebody had remotely accessed my vehicle’s GPS history.
They knew where I lived.
Where I worked.
Where I had driven Emily.
Alvarez arranged patrol checks around both our homes.
Emily blamed herself.
“You should never have offered me that ride.”
We were sitting in a quiet interview room.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Your company was attacked.”
“Computers were accessed.”
“Because of me.”
“Because criminals don’t want to get caught.”
She looked away.
“I should go.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
“Alone?”
“I was alone before Thursday.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to be now.”
She looked at me.
The silence between us changed.
I reached across the table.
She looked at my hand.
Then placed hers in it.
It was the first time we touched intentionally.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
There it was.
The doctor who could stop bleeding, restart hearts, make decisions while families screamed around her.
Scared.
“So am I.”
She squeezed my hand.
“Good.”
I almost laughed.
“Good?”
“I’d be concerned if you weren’t.”
For a few seconds, the threats disappeared.
The investigation disappeared.
It was just us.
Then Alvarez returned.
“We found something.”
Police had searched Lucas’s delivery bag.
Inside a hidden seam was a flash drive.
Lucas had apparently taken it from Pierce’s house.
Why?
Nobody knew.
The drive was encrypted.
But metadata showed files had recently been copied from a NorthStar server.
Financial records.
Internal emails.
Payment schedules.
Potential evidence of fraud.
Then Alvarez showed us a file name.
SLOAN_SETTLEMENT_FINAL.
Peter Sloan.
The dead accountant.
Emily leaned forward.
“Lucas must have seen it.”
“Possibly.”
“Pierce hit him because he took the drive.”
“Possibly.”
“But Marcus said he wasn’t driving.”
Alvarez nodded.
“Which means there may be another person.”
The drive went to digital forensics.
Emily was placed under temporary police protection.
She hated it.
She also refused to stop working.
“You cannot seriously be going back tomorrow,” I said.
“I have patients.”
“You have people threatening you.”
“My patients didn’t threaten me.”
“That is an impressively terrible argument.”
She smiled.
“You’re worried.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question caught me.
Because I barely knew her.
Because four days ago she had been a stranger sleeping in my back seat.
Because somehow that no longer mattered.
“I don’t know.”
Emily stepped closer.
“I think you do.”
We stood in the hospital parking garage.
Same silver sedan.
Same exhausted doctor.
Completely different night.
“I was supposed to get into another car,” she said.
“Technically.”
“What if I had?”
“You’d probably have gotten home faster.”
She smiled.
“Daniel.”
“Yeah?”
She kissed me.
Briefly.
Softly.
Then stepped back as if surprised by herself.
“Sorry.”
“Please stop apologizing for getting into the wrong things.”
She laughed.
For one moment, everything felt normal.
Then her expression changed.
She was looking past me.
At my car.
The rear passenger door was open.
I knew I had locked it.
We approached carefully.
On the leather seat where Emily had fallen asleep the first night sat her black hospital bag.
But Emily’s bag was hanging from her shoulder.
This one looked identical.
A white envelope rested on top.
Her name was written across it.
DR. EMILY CARTER.
She reached for the envelope.
Inside was a photograph of her mother.
Susan Carter.
Taken twenty years ago.
Emily stopped breathing.
On the back, someone had written:
ASK YOUR FATHER WHY SHE REALLY DIED.
Emily looked at me.
“My father disappeared when I was six.”
Then her phone rang.
The caller ID displayed a name she had not seen in twenty-six years.
May you like
THOMAS CARTER.
Her father was calling.
