Chapter 2 - GRANT’S NAME ON THE SCREEN
Nolan tried to sit up too fast.
Emma caught his shoulder.
“Easy.”
“Grant Whitaker?”
“Yes.”
“Corporate operations?”
“Yes.”
Nolan stared at her wedding ring.
His breathing changed.
Not medically.
Emotionally.
Fear.
“If Grant is your husband,” he said, “you cannot tell him I’m alive.”
Emma slowly removed her hand from his shoulder.
“You’re going to explain that.”
“I will.”
“Right now.”
Nolan looked toward the closed staff-room door.
“How much do you trust him?”
The question landed harder than Emma expected.
Six months ago, she would have answered without thinking.
Completely.
Now she remembered the bank statement she had found in July.
Sixty-two thousand dollars transferred from their savings.
Grant had told her it was temporary.
Then he refused to say where it went.
She remembered Baltimore.
Three weeks earlier, Grant claimed he had spent two nights there for a vendor conference.
Emma later found a restaurant receipt from downtown Chicago in the pocket of his navy wool coat.
When she confronted him, he told her she was exhausted and imagining connections that weren’t there.
That had hurt more than the lie.
“I asked you a question,” Nolan said.
Emma looked at him.
“I don’t know anymore.”
Nolan closed his eyes.
“That may keep you alive.”
Emma felt anger replace fear.
“Stop talking like that.”
“I’m not trying to scare you.”
“You’re lying in a morgue after someone declared you dead. You’re doing a terrible job.”
For the first time, something almost like humor crossed Nolan’s face.
It disappeared quickly.
“Grant was in a meeting eleven days ago. Me. Grant. Evelyn Shaw. Three members of our internal compliance team.”
“Who’s Evelyn?”
“My cofounder. President of Reeves Sentinel.”
Emma recognized the name.
Evelyn Shaw appeared beside Nolan in nearly every photograph announcing a new government contract or hospital partnership.
“What was the meeting about?”
“North River.”
Nolan took a careful breath.
“Our software protects their network. Medical records. Pharmacy systems. Billing. Cardiac monitoring archives. Everything.”
Emma glanced toward the hallway.
“And?”
“Six months ago, one of my engineers found evidence that somebody had been using an emergency administrative feature to alter medical records after the fact.”
Emma frowned.
“Alter how?”
“Times. User access. Treatment entries. In some cases, death records.”
The room suddenly felt colder.
Nolan continued.
“The feature was designed for outages. If a hospital lost network access during an emergency, administrators needed a way to reconcile records afterward.”
“And somebody abused it.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“That’s what I was trying to prove.”
Emma folded her arms.
“And Grant?”
“He knew there was an investigation.”
“That doesn’t mean he tried to kill you.”
“I didn’t say he did.”
“You told me not to tell him you’re alive.”
“Because Grant had access to the exact administrative chain used to classify me as deceased.”
Emma stared at him.
Nolan looked exhausted.
But not confused.
“Yesterday afternoon,” he continued, “I was supposed to meet an outside investigator. I never made it.”
“What happened?”
“I had dinner downtown first.”
“With who?”
“Evelyn.”
Emma’s stomach tightened.
“I remember one glass of wine. I remember feeling strange. I remember trying to stand.”
He swallowed.
“Then I remember North River.”
“Who brought you here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you remember?”
“Dr. Marsh leaning over me.”
Celia.
Emma pictured the signature on the cremation authorization.
“She told me I had suffered a cardiac event. I knew that wasn’t true. I tried to move. Couldn’t.”
His hands tightened beneath the blanket.
“Then I heard voices outside the room.”
“Whose?”
“Evelyn’s.”
He looked directly at Emma.
“And Grant’s.”
Emma stopped breathing for a second.
“What did he say?”
Nolan hesitated.
“He said, ‘You told me he wouldn’t wake up.’”
Emma took one step backward.
“That could mean anything.”
“I know.”
“Did you hear Grant say to kill you?”
“No.”
“Did you hear him say he knew what had been done to you?”
“No.”
“Then don’t make him guilty because you’re frightened.”
Nolan studied her.
“You’re defending a man you’re hiding from.”
Emma’s face burned.
“I’m asking for facts.”
“Good.”
Nolan nodded slowly.
“That’s exactly what we need.”
He shifted his legs toward the floor.
Emma immediately stopped him.
“You’re not walking anywhere.”
“My personal effects.”
“What?”
“When they admitted me, I had a watch.”
“So?”
“Find it.”
Emma left him under the blankets and returned to the preparation room.
A row of clear property bags sat inside a locked metal cabinet.
Her custodial key did not fit.
The day attendant’s emergency key did.
Emma had watched him hide it beneath the desk drawer after complaining that administration kept losing copies.
She opened the cabinet.
Nolan’s bag was on the bottom shelf.
Wallet.
Belt.
Shoes.
Phone.
Steel wristwatch.
Emma brought everything back.
Nolan ignored the phone.
He took the watch.
Using his thumbnail, he pressed beneath the clasp until a tiny rectangular storage wafer slid free.
Emma blinked.
“You keep computer files in your watch?”
“When you run a cybersecurity company, paranoia becomes an occupational skill.”
“What’s on it?”
“The last copy I made before dinner.”
“Of what?”
“The North River audit trail.”
Emma stared at him.
“If that proves what happened, why are we still sitting here?”
“Because I need a computer that isn’t connected to the hospital network.”
The overnight custodial supervisor used an old laptop for supply inventories.
Its wireless connection had been broken for months.
Emma retrieved it.
Nolan inserted the storage wafer.
The first folder contained hundreds of technical entries Emma could not understand.
Nolan could.
He moved faster now.
Timestamp.
Authorization.
Credential.
Override.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
“Nolan.”
“Someone used the mortality reconciliation tool at 1:46 this morning.”
Emma leaned closer.
A patient number appeared.
She recognized it from Nolan’s wristband.
Below that was the status change.
LIVING PATIENT.
Then:
DECEASED.
Beneath it was the authorization line.
USER: GWHITAKER
CORPORATE OPERATIONS ADMINISTRATOR
Emma read it twice.
Then a third time.
“That could be stolen credentials.”
“Yes.”
“You said that happens.”
“It does.”
“So this proves nothing.”
Nolan clicked the next field.
SECONDARY AUTHENTICATION: PHYSICAL BADGE VERIFIED.
Emma’s throat tightened.
A grainy security image opened beside the log.
A man stood outside the restricted cardiac administration room at 1:44 a.m.
His face was turned away.
But Emma knew that coat.
Navy wool.
Double-breasted.
One brass button missing near the bottom.
She had bought it for Grant on their fifteenth anniversary.
Nolan looked at her.
May you like
Emma could not look away from the screen.
At 1:46 that morning, while Grant believed his wife was sleeping somewhere he could not find her, someone wearing his coat had used his badge to declare Nolan Reeves dead.
