Chapter 5: What Really Happened on Route 9
Ivan didn't sleep.
He lay on the couch of the new apartment — Jessi's assistant had arranged it, third floor of a building twelve minutes from Sterling & Vance, furnished and ready like a stage set — and stared at the ceiling with his phone on his chest.
*You should ask her about the accident.
The real one.*
He'd run the number twice.
Prepaid.
Untraceable.
Whoever sent it had done this before.
By six in the morning he was dressed.
By seven he was in the building's lobby, waiting.
Jessi arrived at seven-forty, her car pulling up to the curb with the precision of a woman who had run on a schedule her entire adult life.
She saw his face when she stepped out.
"What happened?"
He showed her the phone.
She read the message.
Her expression didn't change, but she handed the phone back with slightly more care than was necessary.
"Come upstairs," she said.
In her office, with the door closed, she stood at the window with her back to him for a long moment.
"The accident was fourteen months ago," she said.
"Route 9, just outside the city.
A truck ran a red light and hit the driver's side of my car."
"I know what the press reported."
"The press reported a fractured rib and a bruised shoulder." She turned around.
"The actual injuries were three fractured ribs, a cracked sternum, a partially collapsed lung, and significant damage to the thoracic vertebrae." She said it the way you'd read a list of figures in a quarterly report.
"I was in hospital for eleven days.
I told the board it was four."
Ivan was quiet.
"If Marcus had known the full extent," she said, "he would have filed the competency petition fourteen months ago.
I would have lost before I had a chance to build my case against him."
"So you lied."
"I managed information."
"Jessi."
She met his eyes.
"Yes.
I lied."
"Who else knows the real extent?"
"My surgeon.
One nurse who signed an NDA.
And now you."
Ivan thought about the text.
About the untraceable number.
About the specific wording — *the real one, not the story she told the press.*
"The surgeon or the nurse sent that message," he said.
"Or someone they told."
"Have you had any contact with either of them recently?"
"My surgeon retired eight months ago.
Moved to Portugal." She paused.
"The nurse — her name is Carol Reeves — she left the hospital six months after my discharge.
I don't know where she is now."
Ivan pulled out his phone and opened a search.
"Carol Reeves.
What hospital?"
"Mercy General.
Trauma unit."
He typed.
Searched.
Found a LinkedIn profile, dormant for seven months.
Last listed employer: Mercy General Hospital.
Current employer: blank.
Then a second result.
A local news item, four months old.
*Former Mercy General nurse files wrongful termination complaint.*
He turned the phone to show her.
Jessi read it.
Her jaw tightened.
"She was fired," Ivan said.
"Six months after your discharge.
Right around the time Marcus would have started building his case."
"He got to her."
"He tried to.
She filed a complaint instead of staying quiet." Ivan looked at the article again.
"Which means she's not on his side."
"Or she's playing both sides."
"Or she needs someone to trust." He stood up.
"I want to find her."
"Ivan—"
"She knows the full truth about the accident.
If Marcus already has that information and is saving it, he'll use it at the worst possible moment — right before the board vote." He looked at Jessi.
"We need to know what she knows before he uses it."
Jessi was quiet for a long moment.
"She's a civilian.
She's already been hurt once."
"I know.
I'll be careful."
"That's not what I meant." Jessi looked at him steadily.
"I meant — if you find her, and she's frightened, and you bring her into this — she becomes a target."
Ivan held her gaze.
"So do you.
Every day."
Something moved behind Jessi's eyes.
Not softness exactly.
More like the recognition of a fact she hadn't expected someone else to name.
"Find her," she said.
"But don't tell me how."
He nodded and picked up his jacket.
"Ivan." Her voice stopped him at the door.
"The money in the briefcase.
You haven't touched it."
"I know."
"Why not?"
He thought about Fiona's name handwritten at the top of the file.
Her dosage schedule in yellow.
"Because I want to be able to walk away if I have to," he said.
"And I can't do that if I've already spent it."
May you like
He left before she could answer.
He found Carol Reeves by noon.
