Chapter 5: The Doctor Who Said Nothing
Dr.
Miriam Osei arrived at the estate at half past nine.
I had known her for eleven years.
She had treated Genevieve during the first trimester when the twins were still a secret we hadn't told anyone.
She had never worked with Yates.
She had no connection to Crosby Vane.
I was certain of that because I had spent twenty minutes on the phone with her husband confirming it before I called her.
She came in through the kitchen entrance with a single bag and no questions.
"Show me the children first," she said.
"Talk after."
I took her to the medical suite.
Jonah and Blythe were asleep, Jonah's hand still loosely wrapped around his sister's wrist the way it always was.
Miriam stood at the glass for a long moment before she went in.
I waited in the corridor.
Prescott appeared at my shoulder.
"Yates is scheduled for morning rounds at seven," he said quietly.
"What do you want me to tell him?"
"Nothing yet.
Let him come.
Act normal."
"And if he notices something's changed?"
"Then we'll know he's paying closer attention than a doctor should."
Prescott nodded and moved away.
Through the glass, I watched Miriam work.
She was methodical and unhurried.
She checked the IV lines first.
Then the medication log clipped to the end of Blythe's bed.
She read it twice.
The second time, her expression didn't change, but she turned a page back and read something again.
She came out fifteen minutes later.
"The medication log," she said.
"Who maintains it?"
"Yates's team.
Two nurses on rotation."
"Has anyone outside that team reviewed it recently?"
"No."
She looked at me directly.
"The dosage on Blythe's secondary line was adjusted four days ago.
There's no physician note authorizing the change.
No countersignature.
Just a notation in a nurse's handwriting."
"Is that unusual?"
"In a private facility with this level of care?
It shouldn't happen.
Ever."
I kept my voice level.
"What was changed?"
"The compound supporting their immune response was reduced by forty percent." She paused.
"If their bl00d counts aren't recovering, that adjustment would be exactly why."
The corridor felt very narrow.
"Someone deliberately slowed their recovery."
"I can't say that definitively without the toxicology." She held my gaze.
"But I can say that a forty-percent reduction in that compound, with no authorization and no note, is not a mistake.
Nurses in a facility like this don't make that kind of mistake."
"How long to run a full screen?"
"Six hours for preliminary results.
Full panel by morning."
"Do it."
She went back in.
I stood at the glass and watched her draw the samples, her movements quiet and precise, the twins sleeping through all of it.
Jonah shifted once.
His hand tightened around Blythe's wrist, then relaxed.
At eleven, I went to find Nora.
She was in the guest room on the second floor, sitting at the small desk near the window with the lights low.
She hadn't slept.
The photograph of Genevieve was on the desk in front of her.
"The doctor is running the screen," I said from the doorway.
Nora nodded.
"There was an unauthorized change to the children's medication four days ago."
She closed her eyes briefly.
"Then we were right."
"We don't have proof yet."
"No." She opened her eyes.
"But you believe it now."
I didn't answer.
I didn't need to.
"Genevieve's letter," I said.
"She mentioned documents she'd hidden.
Did she give you any other detail?
A location.
A person.
Anything."
Nora was quiet for a moment.
"She mentioned a name once.
Someone she said she trusted completely.
A man named Aldric Boone." She looked up.
"She said if she ever needed to get something to you safely, she would go through him."
"I don't know that name."
"She said you wouldn't.
That was the point."
I pulled out my phone and typed the name.
"She also said something else," Nora added.
"She said Aldric would only speak to you if you came alone.
No Prescott.
No security.
Just you."
I looked up from the phone.
"She said that specifically?
No Prescott?"
"She said: tell Lawson to leave the man with the gray tie at home." Nora almost smiled.
"She said he'd know who she meant."
Prescott had worn a gray tie to our wedding.
Genevieve had teased him about it for years.
My throat tightened.
"Where do I find Aldric Boone?"
Nora reached into the pocket of her coat — still draped over the chair — and produced a small card.
Plain white.
A street address on the south side of the city.
Nothing else.
"She gave me that three years ago," Nora said.
"She told me to keep it somewhere safe and never write his name on it."
I took the card.
At that moment my phone lit up on the desk.
A message from Prescott.
*Yates just badged into the building.
May you like
It's midnight.
He never comes in at midnight.*
