Chapter 10 - The Person Who Still Had a Copy
The stolen sample should have killed the case.
It almost did.
Dr. Priya Shah stood beside two administrators, furious.
Ethan looked at Rachel. "Inside access."
"Again."
Nora arrived twenty minutes later.
Rachel had asked her to stay away.
Nora ignored her.
"Sophie is the reason we're all here," she said. "I'm not sitting in a hotel room while people erase her medical record."
Dr. Shah looked at Nora.
Then she smiled.
"Good."
Ethan frowned. "Why are you smiling?"
Shah reached into her coat pocket and removed a sealed envelope.
"Because I stopped trusting our own system when your family office called me twelve minutes after Nora brought Sophie in."
Nora stared.
"They called you?"
"A man identifying himself as Malcolm Rourke said the visit was unauthorized and the family required all results routed to Dr. Vale."
Ethan swore.
Shah continued. "So I printed the instrument output before I uploaded anything."
She handed the envelope to Rachel.
"The sample is gone. The result isn't."
Rachel opened it.
The report did not name a poison or anything dramatic.
It showed an unauthorized prescription sedative present at a level high enough to explain Sophie's repeated episodes of unusual sleepiness and confusion.
Ethan gripped the edge of the counter.
"Who prescribed it?"
"According to the medication database, nobody."
Nora looked at him.
"That's why I took her here."
He closed his eyes.
"I know."
Shah folded her arms. "Somebody was giving your daughter medication outside her documented treatment plan. That's not a theory anymore."
Rachel's phone buzzed.
She read the message.
"And we just got something else."
A court clerk had released documents from Grant's emergency board filing.
Attached was an affidavit from Dr. Martin Vale.
It stated Sophie had a "progressive cognitive condition" requiring long-term guardianship planning.
Nora read the first paragraph.
"This isn't what he told me."
"What did he tell you?" Ethan asked.
"Two months ago, I asked if Sophie needed neurological testing. Vale said there was no evidence of a neurological disease."
Rachel looked up.
"Would you testify to that?"
"Yes."
Ethan's phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
For three seconds, nobody spoke.
Then a man's voice said, "If you want to know who paid Vale, stop looking at Grant."
Ethan straightened.
"Who is this?"
The caller hung up.
A text arrived immediately afterward.
May you like
ONE NAME.
VIVIAN.
