Chapter 9: The Part Where Rourke Finds Out
Agent Carver moved faster than I expected.
By Thursday morning — forty-eight hours after we sat in Nora's office — a federal warrant had been issued for the financial records of Crestline Capital.
By Thursday afternoon, Ethan had retrieved the originals from the safety deposit box in Millhaven and handed them to Carver's team in person.
By Thursday evening, Nora called me at Carol's house and told me that a second warrant had been issued.
This one for Martin Rourke himself.
"He doesn't know yet," she said.
"They'll execute it tomorrow morning."
"What about Patrick?"
A pause.
"Shen's cooperation is being negotiated.
He came in voluntarily this morning with a lawyer.
It appears his involvement was more limited than the photograph suggested — Rourke used the holding company to lease a vehicle Patrick had access to, without Patrick's knowledge.
But Patrick knew about Gemma.
He knew for six weeks and said nothing."
"Six weeks."
"Yes."
I sat with that.
Six weeks.
He had known, and he had called me by accident, and maybe that accident had not been entirely an accident.
I didn't know how to hold all of that at once.
I set it aside.
"Gemma is safe?"
"She's with Ethan's mother in Darnell.
The address has not been compromised."
"I want to go to her."
"Tomorrow," Nora said.
"After the warrant is executed.
I want you away from the city tonight."
I stayed at Carol's.
I did not sleep well.
At three in the morning I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea I didn't drink and thought about Martin Rourke in whatever room he was sleeping in, not yet knowing that by morning his name would be on a federal warrant.
I thought about Sellers.
The man who had been driving the vehicle on Route 9.
I thought about the bend in the road, the rain, the way the car had gone sideways and then there was nothing but the embankment and the dark.
I thought about Gemma in the front seat beside me, and the sound she had made, and the paramedics telling me they were still searching.
At four in the morning, my phone buzzed.
Ethan.
A text, not a call.
*Rourke knows.
Someone tipped him.
He's not at his residence.
Carver's team is looking.
Stay where you are.*
I read it twice.
Then a second message arrived, thirty seconds later.
*He called me twenty minutes ago.
He said if the documents reach the FBI, he'll make sure the story about you driving drunk becomes public regardless.
He has someone who will testify.
He said it doesn't matter what happens to him now — he'll make sure you lose Gemma either way.*
I set the phone down on the table.
Carol appeared in the doorway in her dressing gown.
She looked at my face.
"What happened?"
"Rourke found out about the warrant." I picked up the phone again.
"He's threatening to fabricate a witness.
Someone who'll say I was drinking the night of the accident."
Carol sat down across from me.
"Can he do that?"
"He can try." I was already typing a reply to Ethan.
"But Nora needs to know tonight."
I called Nora at four-fifteen in the morning.
She picked up on the second ring, which told me she had not been sleeping either.
"I heard," she said.
"Carver's team is tracking Rourke's location.
He made a mistake — he used his own phone to call Ethan." A pause.
"The fabricated witness threat is serious, but it's also the move of a man who knows his primary defense has collapsed.
He's trying to create enough noise to complicate the case."
"Will it work?"
"Not if we move first." Her voice was steady.
"There is something Rourke doesn't know.
The hospital has security footage from the night of the accident — the emergency intake.
You were brought in at eleven-fourteen.
The toxicology report from that night is in the hospital's system.
It shows a blood alcohol level of zero."
I closed my eyes.
"He's going to threaten a story," Nora said, "that the evidence already disproves.
His witness will have nothing to stand on."
"Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"Because you didn't need it before.
You needed it now." A brief pause.
"Go back to sleep if you can, Claire.
By morning, this changes."
I looked at Carol across the table.
She had heard enough of the call to understand.
"She's right," Carol said.
"Go lie down."
I went and lay down.
May you like
I did not sleep.
But I stayed still, and I breathed, and I waited for morning to come.
