Chapter 6 - THE EMPTY SAFE
Nolan crossed the space between them.
He would have hit Grant if his legs had been stronger.
Emma stepped between them.
“Not here.”
“He erased Thomas’s evidence.”
Grant didn’t defend himself.
“Yes.”
Nolan stared at him.
“You knew Bell was investigating North River.”
“I knew he was reviewing access anomalies.”
“You knew exactly what he was doing.”
“No. I knew what Evelyn told me.”
“And apparently that was enough.”
Grant looked sick.
“She said the hospital server clock had drifted during an outage. She told me Thomas had accessed the system eleven minutes earlier than the record showed and that the timestamp needed correction before an insurance audit.”
Nolan laughed bitterly.
“You corrected the time.”
“Yes.”
“And then Thomas died.”
“Three days later.”
Nolan went still.
Grant continued.
“He collapsed at North River after coming here to interview an administrator.”
Celia closed her eyes.
Emma looked at her.
“Did you treat him?”
“No.”
“But you know something.”
Celia nodded.
“Thomas came to my office.”
Nolan stared.
“Why?”
“He had found mortality records changed under my credentials. I told him there had been legitimate corrections.”
“Were there?”
“Some.”
“And the others?”
Celia’s silence answered.
Grant leaned against the lockers.
“When Thomas died, I went back to the original access logs. That’s when I understood the timestamp Evelyn asked me to change had placed him inside a secure North River server room.”
Nolan’s voice went quiet.
“He found proof.”
“Yes.”
“And you erased the only record showing where he found it.”
“Yes.”
Grant looked at Emma.
“That is the part I couldn’t tell you.”
Emma’s anger had changed.
It was no longer hot.
It was heavy.
“You didn’t just lie to me.”
“No.”
“You helped them.”
“Yes.”
“Even if you didn’t understand what you were doing.”
“Yes.”
Grant never looked away.
Nolan turned toward the wall.
For several seconds nobody spoke.
Then Emma said, “If we stand here deciding which guilty person is most guilty, Evelyn wins.”
Nolan looked back at her.
It was not forgiveness.
It was focus.
“What evidence remains?”
“My office,” Nolan said.
Grant shook his head.
“Evelyn will have searched it.”
“She doesn’t know about the founder archive.”
Grant looked at him.
“The physical safe?”
Nolan nodded.
“Offline backups. Board correspondence. Original vendor approvals.”
Celia checked the time.
5:14.
“You have less than an hour before morning staff fills these corridors.”
Grant looked at her.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go upstairs.”
“You’ll be exposed.”
“I’ve been exposed for months.”
Celia put her glasses back on.
“I signed the paper that almost sent a living man into a furnace. I’m finished pretending I’m protecting patients by protecting this hospital.”
Nolan stared at her.
“Why should we trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
She handed Emma her badge.
“Trust what I do next.”
Celia turned and walked toward the elevator.
Emma watched her disappear.
Then she looked at Grant.
“Get us out.”
They used the pathology service corridor.
Grant knew exactly which cameras fed into Reeves Sentinel systems and which remained on North River’s older network.
That knowledge bothered Emma.
It also saved them.
At 5:31, they exited through a loading area behind the hospital.
Dawn had begun turning the sky gray.
Grant’s car sat two blocks away.
Nolan lowered himself into the back seat.
Emma took the passenger side.
Grant started the engine.
Nobody spoke for ten minutes.
Finally Grant said, “I didn’t spend all sixty-two thousand.”
Emma looked out the window.
“Not now.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
“The investigator found evidence that Evelyn was using a private security contractor to trace the audit.”
Emma turned.
“The people watching our house?”
“Probably.”
“You knew somebody was watching me.”
“I suspected.”
“And instead of telling me, you made me think I was becoming paranoid.”
Grant’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if you were angry enough to leave me, I thought you’d be safer.”
Emma stared at him.
“That is one of the stupidest things you’ve ever said.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
Grant nodded.
Nolan spoke weakly from the back.
“She’s right.”
Emma almost smiled despite herself.
Reeves Sentinel headquarters stood twenty-one stories above the river.
At that hour, only overnight security and cleaning staff were present.
Grant’s badge opened the underground entrance.
Nolan covered his hospital wristband beneath Grant’s coat.
They took the service elevator.
Nolan’s founder credentials still opened the executive floor.
His office had already changed.
Boxes sat near the walls.
His family photographs had been removed.
A temporary memo had been placed on the reception desk:
EXECUTIVE TRANSITION — EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.
Nolan read it once.
“They didn’t expect me to make it to sunrise.”
His private safe was hidden inside a built-in cabinet.
He entered the combination.
The door opened.
Empty.
Nolan stared.
“That’s impossible.”
Grant leaned closer.
“What was inside?”
“Everything.”
Emma noticed something at the bottom.
A photograph.
She picked it up.
Her breath caught.
It was her wedding photograph.
Emma and Grant standing outside a small white church seventeen years earlier.
The silver frame had sat on the bookshelf in their living room.
It had disappeared the same night Grant said the back door had been left open.
Someone had stolen it from their house.
Now it was inside Nolan’s safe.
Taped to the back was Grant’s missing brass coat button.
And four handwritten words.
ASK WHAT HE GAVE US.
Emma slowly turned toward her husband.
Grant closed his eyes.
May you like
She knew before he spoke.
There was still another secret.
