Chapter 15 - THE LOWEST POINT
On the sixth morning after the assault, Chloe developed a fever.
Her doctors suspected an infection related to her injuries and moved quickly to treat it.
I sat beside her while antibiotics ran through an IV and remembered a hundred ordinary mornings when I'd complained she slept too late.
I would have given anything to hear her come downstairs and ask whether there was cereal.
At noon, the university announced it was revoking her research access pending an ethics investigation.
The statement accused her of improperly removing data she had helped create.
At two, Senator Sterling publicly called for a review of grants awarded to students whose research might threaten national security.
At three, a magistrate issued a temporary protective order restricting contact between our investigators and specific university employees while competing claims were litigated.
Each move was legal-looking.
Together they formed a fence around the truth.
Rebecca filed challenges, but no court could reverse everything before nightfall.
Then the worst news arrived.
A federal laboratory declared Chloe's damaged phone unrecoverable and reported the original attack recording permanently lost.
The data Leo had preserved was a partial copy whose admissibility would be contested.
I had relied on that fragment to prove Chad spoke at the scene.
Without it, the family's attorneys would say every witness had been coached.
Mercer still refused to testify.
Marcus no longer answered my calls after our argument.
Hayes had disappeared.
Vale and Evelyn remained missing.
For the first time, I wondered whether I had confused stubbornness with strength.
I walked into the hospital stairwell and sat on a concrete step.
There was no one to see me cry.
I did it anyway.
When I returned, Chloe was awake.
She had written something on a fresh card.
YOU TOLD ME BRAVE MEANS ASKING FOR HELP.
Below it she added: SO ASK.
I called Marcus.
He answered after one ring.
"I need you," I said.
"I'm here," he replied.
"I need the truth, not your protection."
"Then I'll tell you all of it."
Marcus confessed he had intercepted letters from Evelyn during the first two years after the crash.
He had been told she would be killed if I knew she lived.
He kept the letters in a sealed bank box, believing disclosure would endanger us.
I could scarcely breathe as he described the box.
"Bring them," I said.
He arrived an hour later with eleven envelopes in Evelyn's handwriting.
The oldest began with four words that made my chest ache.
May you like
Alexander, they lied to us.
