Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN WHITE
Frank stared at the photograph as if he could make my father's handwriting disappear by refusing to blink.
"Explain it," I said.
He folded his arms.
"Not here."
Emily almost laughed.
"That seems to be everyone's favorite answer tonight."
I ignored her.
"Frank."
He looked toward the glass wall where doctors moved around Noah.
"Harrow worked for your father."
"Doing what?"
"Cleaning problems."
"Medical problems?"
Frank's mouth tightened.
"Any problem Thomas could not solve with money alone."
I had known my father used doctors to protect wounded men who could not safely appear in emergency rooms.
I had known he bought private clinics, paid surgeons in cash, and kept names out of records.
I had never asked whether the same machinery could hide dead children.
"And Margaret?"
"She was not a nanny then."
"What was she?"
"Administrative coordinator at Northreach."
Emily stood so quickly her chair tipped backward.
"You knew?"
Frank looked at her.
"I knew she worked there."
"And you let her sleep beside Noah."
"She passed every security review."
"A security review performed by you."
His eyes narrowed.
"Careful."
Emily stepped closer.
"Seven children died under her paperwork, and you put her in a nursery."
Frank's face went hard enough to frighten most men.
Emily did not move.
I did.
I shoved Frank against the wall before either of us had time to think.
The framed harbor photograph rattled above his shoulder.
"You knew she was connected to Northreach."
Frank did not reach for his weapon.
"Yes."
"Why did you never tell me?"
"Because when you hired her, Northreach was a dead company and Harrow had not been in your life for years."
"You hired her."
"Your household office hired her."
"You approved her."
Frank's jaw flexed.
"Yes."
I pressed him harder against the wall.
"My son died in front of me tonight."
"And I am standing here trying to find the person who did it."
"Maybe I am looking at him."
For the first time, something flashed in Frank's eyes that was not anger.
Hurt.
He had carried me out of a burning car when I was twenty-two.
He had stood beside my father until the old man died.
He had held Noah before half my relatives did.
I hated that the memory mattered.
I hated even more that it could no longer be trusted.
Emily touched my arm.
"Michael."
I turned on her.
"Do not."
"If Frank wanted Noah dead, he had easier ways."
Frank looked at her in surprise.
"That is your defense of me?"
"It is an observation."
She faced me.
"Someone wants you angry enough to stop thinking."
I released Frank.
He straightened his jacket slowly.
"The maid has a point."
"Do not call me that like it makes me stupid."
"Tonight it makes you the most inconvenient person in Massachusetts."
The door opened before she could answer.
A pediatric nurse stepped inside.
"Mr. Carter, your son is responding well enough that we are moving him to pediatric intensive care."
The room inside my chest loosened by one degree.
"Can I see him?"
"For a minute before transport."
I followed her without waiting for anyone else.
Noah looked impossibly small beneath hospital blankets and cables.
His eyes remained closed.
A ventilator breathed for him with soft mechanical sighs.
I stood beside the bed and touched the top of his head.
"You scared me."
My voice sounded ridiculous.
He was six months old.
He did not know fear from betrayal or power from failure.
He only knew whether someone held him when he cried.
"I am sorry I was not there when it happened."
A doctor adjusted a monitor behind me.
I kept my eyes on Noah.
"I am not leaving again."
The promise was barely out of my mouth when my phone rang.
Private number.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
"Carter."
A man's voice spoke through a layer of electronic distortion.
"How does it feel to watch your bloodline turn blue?"
Every muscle in my body locked.
"Who is this?"
The man chuckled softly.
"Your father asked the same question once."
"Harrow?"
The line went silent for half a second.
Then the voice returned.
"You should not believe everything the dead maid tells you."
I looked through the glass.
Emily stood in the consultation room beside Frank.
"If you touch my son again, I will find you."
"That is the Michael Carter people fear."
The voice sounded almost pleased.
"There he is."
"Say what you want."
"I want you to remember Northreach."
"I never went there."
"Exactly."
The call ended.
I tried to call back.
The number was dead.
When I returned to the consultation room, Frank was already on the phone ordering a trace.
Emily watched me.
"Harrow?"
"Maybe."
"What did he say?"
"That my father asked the same question once."
Her expression changed.
"What question?"
"Who are you?"
Emily lowered her eyes.
"Claire wrote that Harrow enjoyed making people guess."
"Guess what?"
"Which version of him they were talking to."
Frank ended his call.
"Number bounced through six countries."
"Of course it did," Emily said.
Frank looked at her.
"You seem disappointed."
"I am tired of everyone acting surprised that a man who buried clinical deaths knows how to hide a phone call."
A transport team rolled Noah toward the PICU.
I followed.
Frank and Emily came behind me.
The pediatric intensive care unit had been cleared at my request, but I no longer trusted empty hallways.
Every door looked like a threat.
Every uniform looked borrowed.
A state trooper stood at the entrance.
Two of my men stood farther down the hall.
A hospital administrator protested the private security until I told him to send the bill to my lawyer.
Noah was settled into a glass-fronted room at the end of the unit.
I took the chair beside him.
Frank stepped into the corridor to make calls.
Emily stayed near the doorway.
"Sit," I said.
"I am fine."
"That was not concern."
She gave me a tired look.
"Then you are recovering quickly."
I almost smiled.
Almost.
"Why did Ava contact you?"
Emily leaned against the wall.
"She found Claire's name in an old insurance file."
"Ava did not work for Carter Holdings."
"She did not need to."
"She was married to you."
"She knew passwords."
The thought would have amused Ava.
She had always hated that my security systems trusted spouses more than employees.
"What did she want from you?"
"The Northreach locker key."
"Did you give it to her?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Claire told me not to give it to a Carter."
I looked at her.
"Ava was not born a Carter."
"She was still living in your house."
"You did too."
Emily looked away.
"I needed to see whether she was telling the truth."
"And was she?"
"I thought so."
"Thought?"
"Then she died."
The words hit like a fist.
"You believe her death was connected."
"I did not at first."
"And now?"
Emily looked through the glass at Noah.
"Now somebody used the same compound Claire died trying to expose on Ava's son."
A nurse entered the unit pushing a medication cart.
She wore pale blue scrubs and a white jacket.
Her badge swung against her chest.
I watched her automatically.
She smiled at the state trooper.
He checked the badge and let her pass.
Emily's body went still.
"What?"
She stared at the nurse.
"Her shoes."
"What about them?"
"Wrong color."
I almost snapped at her.
Then I remembered the blue powder on Margaret's sole.
"Explain."
"PICU staff here wear closed black or white clinical shoes."
The woman approaching Noah wore gray running shoes with orange soles.
"Maybe she changed shoes."
"Maybe."
The nurse stopped outside Noah's room and scanned a badge against the access panel.
The light turned green.
Emily moved before I did.
She crossed the room fast enough to slam the door with her palm just as the nurse tried to enter.
The woman stumbled.
"Excuse me?"
Emily grabbed the badge clipped to her jacket.
"What is your name?"
The nurse slapped her hand away.
"Get off me."
The state trooper approached.
"Ma'am, step back."
Emily looked at the badge.
"It says Kathryn Moss."
The woman stared at her.
"Because that is my name."
Emily pointed toward a staff board near the nurses' station.
A photograph labeled KATHRYN MOSS showed a Black woman in her fifties.
The fake nurse saw it at the same moment we did.
She ran.
Frank came around the corner and caught her shoulder.
She twisted free with a movement too fast for a normal nurse.
A small syringe flashed in her hand.
Frank knocked it aside.
The syringe skidded across the floor.
The woman drove an elbow into his ribs and sprinted toward the stairwell.
I went after her.
The trooper shouted for me to stop.
I did not.
The stairwell door slammed open.
The fake nurse took three steps at a time.
I followed.
Frank was behind me.
On the landing below, the woman turned and threw something upward.
A glass vial shattered against the wall.
A sharp chemical odor filled the stairwell.
Frank pulled me backward.
"Do not breathe that."
We retreated through the door.
By the time hospital security reached the lower floors, the woman had vanished into the emergency department crowd.
The syringe remained on the PICU floor.
Emily stood over it without touching it.
A silver ring lay beside the needle.
A circle split by three vertical lines.
The Harrow crest.
Frank swore.
The toxicologist arrived with an evidence container.
"What was in the syringe?"
I asked.
"We will test it."
Emily stared at the ring.
"She wanted us to find that."
Frank frowned.
"Why?"
"Because people who want to stay hidden do not wear logos to murder babies."
I looked at him.
"So Harrow is being framed?"
"Or he wants us to think he is being framed."
Frank rubbed his ribs.
"That is useful."
Emily looked at me.
"Ava said the same thing."
"What?"
"That Harrow always made the obvious answer feel one layer too easy."
I stared at her.
"You keep remembering things my wife said only after someone tries to kill my son."
Her face tightened.
"There is something else."
"Of course there is."
She reached beneath the collar of her uniform and pulled out a thin chain.
A small memory card hung from it inside a clear protective sleeve.
"Ava gave me this the second time we met."
Frank stepped closer.
"What is on it?"
"I never opened it."
"Why not?"
"She told me to open it only if something happened to her and something happened to Noah."
My skin went cold.
Emily removed the card from the chain.
"Both things happened."
We used a hospital laptop that had never touched my company network.
The card contained one video file.
The date stamp was two days before Ava's fatal crash.
My wife's face appeared on the screen.
She was sitting in her car.
Her eyes looked red from lack of sleep.
She looked directly into the camera.
"Emily, if you are watching this, then I was right to be afraid."
I stopped breathing.
Ava continued.
"Michael will want to believe my death was an accident because the alternative will destroy something inside him."
Her voice shook.
"Do not let him."
She looked over her shoulder as if checking the road.
Then she faced the camera again.
"Frank knows Northreach."
Frank went completely still beside me.
Ava swallowed.
"But Frank is not the person I am most afraid of."
The video glitched.
For two seconds, the image broke into blocks of color.
Then Ava returned.
"If Noah is ever targeted, look beneath the greenhouse."
The screen went black.
A final line of text appeared.
May you like
THE CAR WAS ALREADY TAMPERED WITH WHEN I RECORDED THIS.
