Chapter 13 #2
"Same channel. Maria doesn't know who Ani reports to directly, but she knows Ani's office is next to the boardroom. Montgomery's name is on the plaque outside that door."
"That puts Montgomery's network inside three departments. Nursing supervision through Creighton. Facilities through Pruitt. Materials management through Prescott. All hired through the board, not HR."
"Which means the HR director either doesn't know or doesn't care."
"Or is the fourth appointment."
Maren looked at him.
She hadn't considered that. Denise Trevino had processed Maren's schedule change without a single question — a quiet woman in her fifties with a gray bob and reading glasses on a beaded chain, the kind of bureaucrat Maren had filed in her mind as background noise.
But the line between a bureaucrat and an appointment was thinner than most people wanted to believe, and Maren had spent too many years trusting first impressions to make that mistake here.
"I can find out."
"How?"
"Denise handles personnel files. Every new hire gets an orientation packet, and the authorizing department is logged on page two of the packet.
Standard hires go through Executive Administration.
If her paperwork says Board of Directors where it should say Executive Administration, that's your answer. "
"You can access personnel files from a nurses' station?"
"I can access the shared drive. Orientation packets live in a department folder every nurse on this floor has read access to. It's not locked. It's not supposed to be sensitive."
Graham leaned back in his chair. He studied her the way he studied things he was about to say no to, the way a man weighed a risk against the person who'd be taking it.
"Tonight?"
"Shift change. Five forty-five to six. There are twelve nurses logging off and twelve logging on. Nobody reads anybody else's screen during handoff because they're all reading their own patient charts."
"And if Paula leans over?"
"Then I'm looking at a chart."
His hand was on the table, six inches from hers. He didn't move it. But he looked at it for a fraction of a second longer than he looked at most things, and she watched him decide not to reach for her.
"The last time someone in that hospital pushed too hard," he said, "she disappeared. I need you to walk out of this building tonight."
The words landed differently than they would have a week ago. A week ago, she would have heard protection. Control. A man telling a woman to be careful because he didn't trust her judgment. Now she heard what was underneath it.
"I'll walk out," she said. "I'll walk out every night until this is over. That's a promise."
She stood up and left without looking back.
* * *
The shared drive opened at five forty-seven, three minutes to shift change.
Maren sat at the nurses' station with her badge logged into the system, surrounded by the controlled chaos of twelve nurses ending their day and twelve more starting their night.
Keyboards clacked. Handoff reports were read aloud in low professional voices.
Phones rang. A nursing assistant asked where the extra linens had been moved because someone had rearranged the supply cabinet again.
She navigated to the personnel folder. The directory was organized by department, each subfolder holding orientation packets, annual reviews, and credentialing documents. She opened Human Resources.
Four names.
She clicked on Denise Trevino's packet.
The loading wheel spun. One second. Two. Three.
The day nurse beside her — Paula, who talked through every handoff like she was narrating a documentary — leaned across and tapped the edge of Maren's keyboard.
"System's slow tonight. IT's running a backup. You want me to log you out and back in?"
"It's fine." Maren kept her eyes on the screen. "Just waiting on a chart."
The wheel spun a fourth second.
The file opened. She scrolled to page two.
Position authorized by: Board of Directors, Blossom Springs General Hospital.
Recommending officer: H. Montgomery, Board Chair.
She photographed the screen with the burner phone held low against her thigh, closed the file, and opened a patient chart on top of it. The whole sequence took forty-one seconds. Paula was still narrating her handoff to the night nurse and didn't glance over once.
Maren finished her charting. She logged out of the station, gathered her bag from the locker room, changed out of her scrubs, and walked through the main entrance into the parking lot.
The air was warm for October. The palms along the front drive clicked dryly in a wind off the Gulf, and the streetlight at the edge of the lot had come on even though the sky still held the last gray of sunset.
She got in her car. Locked the doors. Sat for a moment with her hands on the wheel and let her shoulders drop for the first time in twelve hours.
Four appointments.
Creighton. Pruitt. Prescott. Trevino. Nursing. Facilities. Materials management. Human resources. Every one of them hired through the board. Every one of them reporting, directly or indirectly, to Harrison Montgomery.
She took the burner phone out of her bag. She sent the four photos she'd taken that day to the encrypted server Harper had set up on Sunday night.
The delivery confirmation came back inside of a minute.
A second message followed on the heels of the first. Graham.
Walk out?
She looked up through the windshield. Across the lot, past the row of night-shift cars pulling into the spaces the day shift had just vacated, a blue pickup was parked under the far streetlight with its headlights off. She couldn't see the driver, but she didn't need to.
She typed back.
Walked out. In my car. On my way.
A pause. Then:
Drive safe.
Two words. The kind of two words a person sent a dozen times a week without thinking about them.
Except he'd thought about them. She could tell from the pause before he sent them — the half-second of him weighing drive safe against the other thing he might have said, and choosing the one that didn't ask anything of her.
She started the engine.
The blue pickup pulled out of the far streetlight's circle and turned right at the parking lot exit, heading east toward Golden Acres. She turned right behind him. Not close enough for anyone watching to connect the two vehicles. Close enough that she could see his taillights all the way home.