Chapter 6
Graham was at the cottage on Lake Road, sitting at the kitchen table with the laptop open and a cold cup of coffee next to his elbow.
He’d been back from Maren’s house for two hours.
He’d spent the first hour updating the spreadsheet with the new information she’d given him about the scheduling patterns.
He’d spent the rest of the time not thinking about the way she’d leaned against her counter with her arms crossed and told him he didn’t get to decide what was dangerous for her.
The phone rang twice before he picked it up.
“This is Graham.”
“It’s Thompson.” The voice was low, clipped. A man making a call he didn’t want overheard. “You said to call if I noticed anything.”
“I did.”
“There’s a new name on the volunteer schedule. Started today. A man named Victor Pruitt. He’s listed as a facilities liaison, but I’ve been at this hospital for three years, and we’ve never had a facilities liaison before.”
Graham closed the laptop. “What does he look like?”
“Six-one, six-two. Solid build, not fat. Short dark hair, no facial hair. Wears his badge on a lanyard instead of clipped. He spent forty-five minutes in the admin hallway this afternoon and another twenty in the staff parking lot. Didn’t appear to do any actual work.”
“Who hired him?”
“That’s what caught my attention. I asked Donna at the front desk. She said the request came from the board liaison’s office. Not HR. Not the facilities department. The board.”
Graham stood and walked to the window. The cottage sat back from Lake Road, screened by a stand of slash pines and a palmetto thicket that ran along the eastern property line.
The last of the daylight was fading through the trees.
He could see the narrow dirt path that led down to the water, and beyond it, the dark shape of the inlet.
“When you say the board, you mean Montgomery’s office.”
“I mean the board liaison’s office. That’s all I said.” Thompson paused. “But yes. That’s what I mean.”
“Did Pruitt interact with any of the night staff?”
“He asked Donna for a list of department heads and shift supervisors. She gave it to him. It’s not restricted information.”
“Was Maren’s name on the list?”
Another pause. Longer. “She’s a charge nurse. Her name would be on any supervisory roster.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes. Her name was on the list.”
Graham pressed his thumb against the edge of the windowsill. The wood was soft from years of humidity, giving slightly under the pressure.
“I need you to do something for me,” he said. “Don’t approach Pruitt. Don’t ask about him. Don’t change your routine. But if you see him on the floor near the ICU or in any area he doesn’t have a clear reason to be in, I need to know about it.”
“I was planning to do that anyway.”
“I know you were. That’s why I’m asking instead of telling.”
Thompson was quiet for a beat. “You’re worried about her.”
“I’m worried about the operation.”
“Right.” Thompson let that land without pushing it. “I’ll be in touch.”
The line went dead.
Graham set the phone down and stood at the window a moment longer. Victor Pruitt. Facilities liaison. Hired through the board’s office, not HR. Spending his first day cataloging staff names and walking the parking lot.
That wasn’t a facilities liaison. That was a watcher.
* * *
He called Caleb at 7:40.
“We have a new problem.” He relayed Thompson’s information, keeping to the facts. Name, title, hiring authority, behavior. He left out the part where Thompson had said he was worried about her. That was a conversation he wasn’t ready to have.
Caleb absorbed it the way he always did. Silence, processing, then the question that cut to the center.
“Is Maren safe tonight?”
“She’s off shift. Doesn’t go back until tomorrow night.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I was at her house this afternoon. Went over the notebook data, the scheduling patterns. She’s sharp, Caleb.
She’d already spotted the third-Tuesday cycle before I pointed it out.
She’d mapped the physician names to a rotation that nobody at the hospital put together because they weren’t looking for it. ”
“That’s useful. Is she safe?”
“Her house is on Golden Acres Road. Small place, single story, no alarm system. Back door opens onto an unfenced yard that borders a vacant lot. I could name six ways to access the property without being seen from the street.”
“So no.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You described her security profile like you were writing a threat assessment. That’s a no.”
Graham leaned against the counter. The cottage was spare—two chairs, a coffeemaker, cabinets painted white a decade ago. He lived out of a duffel bag on the bedroom floor. Fifteen years of that, and until this week, it had never bothered him.
“I’ll talk to Ronan about surveillance options,” he said. “We might be able to put eyes on the house without her knowing.”
“Without her knowing.”
“She’s already been told that we’re monitoring hospital communications. If I tell her we’re watching her house, she’ll see it as protection. She’ll also see it as control. And she’ll push back harder than the threat warrants.”
“You’ve known her five days.”
“Four.”
“Graham.”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. The scar on his left forearm caught the overhead light. “I hear you.”
“I’m not going to say anything. Harper would, but she’s not on this call.”
“Thank God for small favors.”
“What I will say is this. Victor Pruitt is not a coincidence. If Montgomery is putting eyes inside the hospital, it means the pressure is working. The notebook, your volunteer access, Thompson asking questions. Something’s rattled the cage.
That’s good for the operation. It’s bad for anyone who’s visible. ”
“Maren’s visible.”
“Maren’s the most visible person in the building. She confronted the night supervisor in the medication room. She asked about Rose Embry by name. Her charting access was revoked within hours. If Pruitt’s job is to identify threats, she’s already at the top of his list.”
“What are you recommending?” he asked.
“I’m recommending that you talk to her. Not as a handler, not as a team lead.
As the person who sat across from her this afternoon and went over her data like she was a colleague instead of an asset.
Because that’s what she is now, whether you planned it or not. And colleagues get honest assessments.”
“You sound like Harper.”
“Harper rubs off on people. It’s her worst quality.” A pause. “Talk to her, Graham. Tell her about Pruitt. Let her decide how she wants to handle it. You want her trust. You don’t earn that by managing her. You earn it by giving her the same information you’d want.”
“And if she decides to confront him?”
“Then you deal with that. But you deal with it together, not from a surveillance van on her street. That’s not who you want to be in this, and it’s not what she deserves.”
Graham stared at the ceiling. A water stain in the corner was shaped like a hand, fingers spread. He’d noticed it the first night in the cottage and had been looking at it every evening since, the way you look at something familiar when everything else is shifting.
“When did you get good at this?” he asked.
“I’m not good at it. I just made every mistake first.” The smile was audible. “Go. Call her. And eat something. You sound like you haven’t eaten since this morning.”
“I ate leftover soup.”
The silence on the other end was pointed.
“Don’t,” Graham said.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“You were thinking it.”
“Good night, Graham.”
“Good night.”
* * *
He picked up the burner at 8:15.
He started typing. Deleted it. Started again. Too clinical. Deleted that too. He stared at the screen for a full minute, then typed a third version and hit send before he could talk himself out of it.
New development. Someone was placed at the hospital today through the board’s office. Not medical staff. Likely surveillance. Your name is on the staff roster he requested. I’d rather tell you the rest in person. Can I come by tomorrow morning?
The reply came in under a minute.
Define morning.
He read the message twice. There was a warmth in those two words that had no business being in a text about surveillance.
Nine?
I’ll make coffee.
Graham set the phone down. Three hours ago he’d been standing in her kitchen drinking her coffee, and the distance between then and now felt wider than twelve minutes of road.
He’d known women like Maren. He’d served with them.
He’d lost some of them. There was a girl in Khost—a village, a burning building, a decision made in less than six seconds about who he could reach and who he couldn’t.
The math had never come out clean, and he’d been recalculating it for eleven years.
She was a nurse in a small-town hospital who’d stumbled into something terrible and refused to flinch. He respected that. He was drawn to it. And he was afraid of what it meant. The people who didn’t flinch were the ones who got hurt.
He closed the laptop. The cottage was quiet around him—the inlet, the frogs, the particular silence of a man who’d been passing through places for fifteen years and had just told a woman he’d come by in the morning.
Together. The word sat in his chest. Not comfortable, exactly. But warm.
He went to bed.