Chapter 7: The Gala
The dress was navy blue, which Claire had chosen specifically because it was the kind of dress that disappeared in a crowd.
Roman had sent it.
She hadn't asked him to.
It arrived in a box with no note, which she was beginning to understand was its own kind of language.
The gala was held in a ballroom on the forty-second floor of a building downtown — the kind of room that existed to remind people of the distance between themselves and everyone below.
Crystal above.
City lights through floor-to-ceiling windows.
A string quartet in the corner playing something that required no attention.
Claire arrived at seven-fifteen and accepted a glass of sparkling water from a passing tray.
She found Harlan Webb within four minutes.
He was holding court near the bar — three hospital board members, a city alderman, and a woman in red who laughed at everything he said.
He saw Claire across the room and his smile widened.
"Claire." He crossed toward her, hand extended.
"I didn't know you'd be here."
"I bought a ticket," she said.
"The pediatric unit is important to me."
"It's important to all of us." He shook her hand warmly.
"I'm glad you came.
Are you here alone?"
"Meeting someone," she said.
"Of course." He gestured at the room.
"Enjoy yourself.
This is a good night."
He moved back toward his group.
Claire exhaled slowly and touched the small pin on her dress — a camera, no larger than a shirt button, that Roman's people had fitted that afternoon.
She pressed it once.
Active.
Somewhere across the city, Roman was watching.
The evening moved.
Claire circulated.
She smiled at people she half-recognized from hospital corridors and made conversation about the pediatric unit and the importance of cardiac care and the remarkable generosity of Dr.
Webb.
At nine-thirty, a man arrived.
She recognized him from the photograph Roman had shown her.
Dario Voss was fifty-three, compact, with a gray beard and the kind of tan that came from spending winters somewhere warm.
He wore his tuxedo like a man who had worn one before but didn't enjoy it.
He shook Webb's hand near the entrance to a private corridor that led, according to the floor plan Roman had sent her, to a small conference room used for donor meetings.
Claire set her water glass down.
She moved toward the corridor.
A man in a dark suit stepped into her path.
"This area is reserved for—"
"I know Dr.
Webb," Claire said.
"He asked me to bring him something."
The man looked at her.
She held his gaze.
He stepped aside.
The corridor was quiet.
The door to the conference room was almost closed — not latched, just resting against the frame.
Claire stopped two feet from it.
Inside, she could hear voices.
Webb's first: "The transfer clears tonight.
The account is already set up."
Then Voss: "And the next shipment?"
"Two weeks.
Same dock, same window.
I've already adjusted the overnight schedule."
"There's a problem with the schedule," Voss said.
"Someone's been looking at the loading dock logs."
Silence.
Then Webb: "Who?"
"We don't know yet.
But it happened twice in the last week.
Someone pulled the overnight records."
Another silence.
Then Webb said, very quietly: "I'll find out."
Claire stepped back from the door.
She walked back down the corridor at the same pace she had arrived.
She nodded at the man in the dark suit.
She picked up her water glass from the table where she had left it.
Her hand was completely steady.
She pressed the pin once more.
Stop.
Then she took out her phone and typed to Roman: *Got it.
Both of them.
Webb knows someone pulled the logs.
He's going to look for me.*
The response came in forty seconds.
*Leave now.
Car is outside.
Don't look back.*
May you like
She set the water glass down on a passing tray.
She didn't look back.
