Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Silver Coat
I grabbed the heaviest thing within reach.
A brass lamp.
The handle moved again.
Slowly.
I raised the lamp over my shoulder.
The door opened two inches.
“Claire?”
I almost screamed.
“Tessa?”
My roommate pushed inside, carrying an overnight bag.
She stared at the lamp.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I dropped it onto the couch.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ben and I had a fight.”
She looked at my face.
“Why do you look like you saw a body?”
Close enough.
I locked the door behind her and told her the shortest possible version.
A man collapsed.
I gave him CPR.
The man was Adrian Blackwood.
Someone stole files from my apartment.
Tessa stared at me.
“You left out the part where normal life ended.”
“I’m calling the police.”
“Good.”
The officers arrived twenty minutes later.
They photographed the envelope.
Checked the door.
Looked for signs of forced entry.
There were none.
My building’s hallway camera had been disabled from 11:40 p.m. until 12:55 a.m.
Exactly when I was gone.
The coincidence wasn’t funny anymore.
At 3:10 a.m., Martin called.
“Are you safe?”
“Police are here.”
“I heard.”
“How?”
“I put an alert on your employee file.”
“That’s not creepy at all.”
“Claire.”
His tone stopped me.
“Adrian’s toxicology came back.”
I sat down.
“What did they find?”
“A sedative.”
My mouth went dry.
“Enough to kill him?”
“Combined with his heart medication, possibly.”
“I thought he had no medical history.”
“He has an arrhythmia. Very private. Only a few people knew.”
Including whoever put something in his coffee.
“Martin, someone broke into my apartment.”
“I’m coming.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do.”
He arrived before sunrise.
Tessa made coffee, then decided nobody in the apartment wanted coffee anymore and poured it down the sink.
Martin studied the photograph.
“Angle suggests this was taken from near the executive reception desk.”
“Could Vanessa have taken it?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I don’t like guesses.”
Neither did I.
At seven, an unexpected call came from Northwestern Memorial.
Adrian wanted to see me.
I assumed that meant later.
The nurse said now.
Martin drove.
The hospital floor had two private security guards outside Adrian’s room.
Vanessa was there.
So was a man I recognized from internal company meetings.
Daniel Mercer.
My boss.
He rushed toward me.
“Claire, thank God.”
I stopped.
Daniel was forty-three, divorced, permanently caffeinated, and usually incapable of looking concerned about anything except quarterly projections.
Today he looked terrified.
“I heard what happened,” he said.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
“That’s impressive. Some of it happened three hours ago.”
His smile vanished.
Vanessa watched us from across the hall.
“Adrian asked for Claire,” a nurse said.
Vanessa stood.
“I’m going in.”
“He specifically asked to see Ms. Bennett alone.”
That landed badly.
Vanessa’s posture stiffened.
“She’s an employee.”
“She’s also the person who saved his life.”
The nurse opened the door for me.
Adrian looked different in a hospital bed.
Smaller.
Not physically.
His shoulders were still broad.
His face still carried the hard lines of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
But the oxygen tube, monitors and bruising across his chest stripped away the mythology.
I stood near the door.
He opened his eyes.
“You.”
His voice was rough.
“Me.”
“You broke my ribs.”
I froze.
Then the corner of his mouth moved.
“Doctor says that’s preferable to dying.”
I exhaled.
“Glad we agree.”
“Come closer.”
I did.
He studied my face.
“You got my email?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone else?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened to your files?”
“How do you know something happened?”
His expression answered before his words did.
“Because whoever drugged me wasn’t improvising.”
I told him about the missing drive.
The photograph.
The messages.
He closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them again, the softness was gone.
“Northstar isn’t four-point-eight million.”
“What?”
“That’s what you found in your division.”
He reached toward the bedside table and handed me a folded piece of paper.
A handwritten number.
$67,400,000.
I stared at it.
“Over five years,” he said.
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s real.”
“Who approved that much?”
“People with authority.”
“Vanessa?”
His eyes stayed on mine.
“I don’t know yet.”
That surprised me.
“I thought you would.”
“That’s the mistake people make about CEOs. They assume ownership means omniscience.”
He looked toward the door.
“I trusted a structure. Someone used that trust.”
“What did you want from me at eight?”
“The original models. Yours were the first numbers that didn’t match manipulated reports.”
“Manipulated by whom?”
“Exactly.”
He shifted and winced.
“You need protection.”
“I need my life back.”
“You won’t get it by pretending nothing happened.”
I hated that he was right.
“Why me?” I asked. “Why frame me?”
“Because you found the money.”
“Then why hurt you?”
“Because I believed you.”
Before I could respond, the door opened.
Vanessa entered.
“I said alone,” Adrian said.
“You almost died.”
“And now I’m speaking to the woman who stopped that from happening.”
Vanessa’s eyes flicked toward me.
“Police want to question Claire.”
“Then they can wait.”
“This is becoming a corporate crisis.”
Adrian’s voice sharpened.
“I was poisoned. That is not a public-relations problem.”
Silence.
Vanessa recovered first.
“Fine.”
She turned toward me.
“Daniel is outside. He has information about your files.”
I looked at Adrian.
“Go,” he said.
Daniel waited near the elevators.
He looked worse than before.
“What information?”
He pulled me aside.
“You need to stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Northstar.”
“No.”
“Claire, listen to me.”
He lowered his voice.
“I approved your late-floor access because Adrian requested your records directly. I didn’t know why until yesterday.”
“You told me to stop investigating.”
“Because I was trying to keep you out of this.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I have a daughter.”
The sentence stopped me.
Daniel’s eyes filled with shame.
“They came to my house three weeks ago.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know their names.”
“What did they want?”
“My login credentials.”
My stomach turned.
“Did you give them?”
“Yes.”
I stepped back.
“Daniel.”
“They had pictures of Lily leaving school.”
His voice cracked.
“I gave them everything.”
“Is that how someone copied my badge?”
“Probably.”
“Who was the person in the maintenance jacket?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you tamper with the reports?”
“No. But my account was used.”
He reached into his coat.
“I kept something.”
A flash drive.
“They told me to delete the server logs after they used my credentials. I copied them first.”
“Why?”
“In case something happened to me.”
He put the drive into my palm.
“Don’t give this to company security.”
“Why not Martin?”
“I don’t know who’s compromised.”
I closed my fingers around it.
Daniel glanced over my shoulder.
His face drained.
“What?”
He stared down the hall.
Vanessa stood near Adrian’s room.
Watching us.
Daniel whispered, “She knows.”
Then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
A text.
His hands began shaking.
“What does it say?”
He turned the screen toward me.
One sentence.
WE HAVE LILY.
May you like
Daniel dropped the phone.
And somewhere downstairs, a hospital alarm began screaming.
