Chapter 5
Story: Her Grandmother Threw Her From the Hospital Bed, Then Her Father Saw It
Reggie moved fast for a man his age. He crossed the room in three strides, put his hand flat on the door, and leaned his weight against it. The handle rattled once more, then stopped.
"Who's there?" Reggie called.
No answer. The handle was still. The corridor beyond the door was silent.
"Get back," Reggie said to Miles. "To the corner."
Miles backed up against the stacked hard drives. His hand went to his pocket, to the USB drive, and he closed his fingers around it.
The handle turned again. This time it was slower. Deliberate. A warning, maybe. A promise.
Then the footsteps receded, soft and even, walking back down the corridor the way they had come.
Reggie counted to sixty before he moved. He unlocked the door and opened it a crack, looked out, locked it again.
"Nobody there," he said. "But I know what I heard."
"Who would know we were down here?" Miles said.
Reggie shook his head. "Nobody. The floor's empty this time of night. The cameras in the basement are off a different system — there's a dead zone in this corridor."
"Convenient."
"Very."
Miles looked at the drive in his hand. "I need to get this off the property."
"You want to use my office?"
"No," Miles said. "I want to get it out of this building."
He walked to the maintenance room door, opened it, and stepped out into the buzzing fluorescence of the basement corridor. The air was cold and still. The floor stretched empty in both directions.
At the end of the corridor, by the stairwell door, something caught his eye. A small object on the floor, where it had not been when they came through.
He walked to it.
A business card. Cream-colored, thick, embossed with a name he knew.
VIVIENNE M. ASHFORD
Trustee, Ashford Family Foundation
And on the back, in pencil, a message in block capitals:
YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE COME DOWN HERE.
"Reggie," Miles called. "You see this?"
Reggie appeared at the maintenance room door. He looked at the card in Miles's hand, and his face went tight.
"That wasn't there before," he said.
"I know."
"Your mother's card."
"Yeah."
Reggie looked down the empty corridor. "Sir, I'm going to say something I shouldn't say. The hospital has a policy on this kind of thing. Threats against patients' families. But the policy takes time. Paperwork. A security review. Meanwhile, your daughter's upstairs alone."
Miles's eyes went to the ceiling. Six floors up. His daughter. Alone.
"Go," Reggie said. "I'll lock up here. Keep the drive. Back it up somewhere — family lawyer, your own cloud, I don't care. But don't put it in the hospital system."
Miles took the stairs two at a time. He was breathing hard when he reached the sixth floor, and the corridor was lit and empty, and the door to Aria's room was closed.
He opened it slowly.
The bed was where he left it. The monitor beeped. Aria was asleep, her rabbit under her chin, the yellow ribbon loose on the pillow.
And sitting in the visitor's chair — the one he had occupied — was Cora.
She looked up when he came in. Her face was not surprised.
"He's still here," she said.
"Who?"
"Your mother's driver. She sent him. He's been sitting in the waiting room since midnight, watching the elevators."
Miles looked at the door. "You know this how?"
"Night nurse told me. She said he didn't want a coffee, didn't want a magazine, just wanted to watch." Cora looked at him. "What did you find?"
He held up the USB drive.
"Footage of her clearing out Aria's locker," he said. "Between six and six-thirty this morning. After she threw her on the floor."
Cora's face went cold.
"Did you call the police?" she said.
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
"Because," Miles said slowly, "I want to know what's in that closet first."
He sat on the edge of the bed. Aria stirred, her small hand reaching out, and he took it.
"I need to go to my mother's house," he said. "The estate. There's a closet in Aria's room, and I need to see what's inside it."
"Now?"
"Before morning, when she's home and it's locked."
Cora looked at him. Then she looked at Aria, asleep, and her hand went to the call button on the wall.
"I'll stay with her," she said. "I'm not due off shift for another hour, and I've got nothing better to do."
"Her driver's downstairs."
"Her driver's in the waiting room. The nurses' station is covered. If he moves, I'll know."
Miles squeezed his daughter's hand, then let go. He stood up and looked at the bedside table. At the silver cigarette case. At the drawing.
"Do not look in the closet. She gets mad when you look in the closet."
"I'll be back before she wakes up," he said.
He didn't know if that was true. But he said it anyway, because the words needed to exist in the air between them.
He left the room, walked past the nurses' station where the night nurse looked up with a tired nod, and took the elevator to the ground floor. The waiting room was off the main lobby, and he saw the driver before the driver saw him — a heavy man in a black suit, reading a tabloid that he folded too carefully when Miles crossed the lobby.
Miles didn't look at him. He walked out into the cold Boston night and got into the car he had left in the short-stay lot, and he put the key in the ignition.
The drive to his mother's estate took forty minutes. He made it in twenty-five, and the gate at the end of the drive was open, and the house was dark.
The front door was unlocked.
She never locks it, he thought, and that was wrong, she always locked it, she had turned the deadbolt since his father died, she complained about the town. Something opened this door.
He pushed it open and stepped into the dark foyer. The smell of his childhood. Lemon polish, old wood, the faint lilac of his mother's perfume.
The stairs creaked under his weight. The hallway was dark, and Aria's room was at the end of it, and the door was closed.
He opened it.
The room was exactly as his daughter had left it. The rabbit wallpaper. The white desk with the yellow chair. The window seat with the cushions she had picked out. The closet door was closed.
He walked to it.
There was something leaning against the inside of the door. Something light, that shifted when he put his hand on the knob.
"Listen to it," Reggie had said.
He opened the door.
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