Chapter 24: Learning to Fight Together

Wednesday morning began with a knock on Emma's office door.

She looked up from the grant proposal she'd been revising. Rachel leaned against the frame, holding two cups of coffee.

"You've become impossible to surprise."

"I've become married to a man whose assistant schedules breakfast three weeks in advance."

Rachel laughed. "I still don't understand how you survive that house."

"Neither do I." She accepted the coffee. "What brings you here?"

Rachel hesitated. "Someone's outside asking questions."

Emma's smile faded. "What kind of questions?"

"About our donors."

The man introduced himself as a freelance researcher. He carried a notebook. He smiled too easily.

"I'm writing about charitable organizations."

Emma had met reporters before. This wasn't one.

"What publication?"

"I'm still deciding where it'll be published."

Rachel's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Emma kept smiling.

"What exactly would you like to know?"

"The Kingsley Foundation."

"We're a separate nonprofit."

"I know." He flipped another page. "But your husband donates."

"Along with hundreds of other people."

He nodded. "And before your marriage? You spent time around St. Andrew's, didn't you? Six years ago."

Her fingers tightened around the coffee cup. "I've been in and out of a lot of hospitals over the years."

"Of course." His smile never changed. He closed his notebook. "You've been very helpful."

Neither woman believed that.

Rachel watched him disappear through the front doors. "I didn't like him."

"Neither did I."

"He already knew the answers."

Emma looked toward the street. "He wasn't asking questions. He was checking them."

Across town, Nathan entered Ethan's office without knocking. "You were right."

"About what?"

"They've stopped watching Kingsley Industries."

"And?"

"They've started watching Emma."

Silence. Nathan placed two photographs on the desk. One showed Emma entering the nonprofit Monday morning. The second showed her leaving the café after meeting Richard Bennett. Both taken from across the street.

Someone had been following her.

Nathan set a third photograph beside the others, taken outside Kingsley Manor's own gates. Whoever this was hadn't been shy about it, only careful.

Ethan's jaw tightened. "When?"

"The last three days."

"Nathan."

"I've already increased security."

"Not enough."

"I know."

For the first time in years, Nathan heard something unfamiliar in Ethan's voice.

Fear. Not for the company. Not for himself.

For Emma.

That evening Emma arrived home carrying another stack of reports Ethan had asked her to review. She found him waiting in the library.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Sit."

His voice was calm. Too calm. She immediately knew something had happened.

"What is it?"

He slid the photographs across the table.

The café. The nonprofit. The subway entrance. Someone had been watching her.

"I—" Her voice disappeared. "I never saw them."

"They made sure you wouldn't."

"This is because of the investigation."

"I believe so."

"You should have told me sooner."

"I know."

A long silence settled between them.

"Are you going to ask me to stay home?" she finally asked.

"No."

The answer surprised her.

"I'll ask you to be careful."

"You still trust me?"

"I trust you."

"And whoever is behind this?"

"I don't."

Nathan entered carrying another folder. "Our investigator sent this an hour ago."

He placed it on the desk. Inside were copies of old hospital staffing records. One page had been highlighted.

Dr. Amelia Carter.

Employment ended two days after Emma's mother's death. No explanation given.

"Why would a doctor disappear overnight?"

No one answered. Because none of them knew.

Yet.

Later that night, Emma sat alone in the library long after Ethan had gone upstairs and opened the staffing records again.

Everyone else had focused on Amelia Carter. Emma noticed something different.

Every signature approving the staff changes belonged to the same hospital administrator. The same name appeared seven times.

She circled it with a pencil.

Patterns. People always hid things in patterns. It was the one thing this investigation had in common with a nonprofit's messy donation ledgers, and she was starting to think that wasn't a coincidence either.

Upstairs, Ethan stood outside the library for a moment before quietly walking away. He didn't know what Emma had found.

Only that, for the first time since this investigation began, he no longer felt as though he was carrying it alone.

And somewhere else in the city, the man using the name Daniel Cross looked at a fresh surveillance photograph of Emma.

He drew a single line through it with a black marker.

Beside it, a growing stack of others, each one crossed out the same way, as though scratching her out of the photographs might make her easier to predict in person.

"She's asking the right questions," he murmured. "We'll have to move sooner than planned."