Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
The hospital was too bright after the annex’s darkness.
Angus stood in the corridor outside Jonah’s room and felt the contrast in his eyes—clean floors, white light, the hum of climate control doing its work without anyone asking it to.
Through the glass panel in the door, he saw Jonah beneath two blankets with an IV in his arm and the kind of color in his face that still looked borrowed.
Frank sat beside the bed. Clara stood near the window.
Miguel found him there.
“Tammy’s statement is holding,” Miguel said. “The physical evidence is coming in behind it—forensics, emails, the shell company trail.” He looked at the door. “And what Pete said at Holt Marine—that’s on body cam.”
Angus looked at the door.
“‘The tide should have done what Cobb couldn’t.’” Miguel said it quietly, the way you said things that were now evidence rather than conversation. “On record.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
“Kovak’s been notified,” Miguel said. “The review isn’t formally closed yet, but it will be.”
Angus said nothing for long enough that Miguel looked at him.
“Good,” Angus said.
It was the only word he had.
Miguel looked down the corridor. “I should have trusted you sooner.”
“You followed the evidence,” Angus said.
“I followed it too far.”
“No.” Angus kept his eyes on the door. “You followed it until it told the truth.”
A moment passed between them the way it passes between men who have worked together long enough to know what silence means.
“For what it’s worth,” Miguel said, “I never stopped wanting it to be wrong.”
“I know,” Angus said.
He went in.
The room was warmer than the corridor. Jonah’s eyes were open—not fully, but enough. He acknowledged Angus’s presence with a small movement and Angus nodded.
Frank was in the chair beside the bed. He stood when Angus came in, and Angus waved him back down.
“I won’t stay,” Angus said.
He stood near the foot of the bed and looked at Jonah. IV in the back of his left hand. His wrists were bandaged, the zip tie having cut deep enough to require thick wraps. He was awake, which was the main thing.
Frank cleared his throat.
“Clara showed me the expansion figures,” he said.
Jonah looked at him.
“They’re good,” Frank said.
“Thanks,” Jonah said, his voice rough from disuse.
Clara had told Angus that Frank had been sitting in that chair for three hours without managing more than a sentence at a time. Angus watched him try again the way you watch a man approach something difficult at an angle, circling it rather than facing it.
“I should have looked sooner,” Frank said. “At the annex.”
Jonah didn’t say it was fine. He didn’t say don’t worry about it. He said, “Yes.”
The word sat in the room.
Frank looked at his hands. “I thought you wanted to prove a point.”
“I did.” A breath. “I wanted you to listen.”
Angus took a step toward the doorway.
“I am proud of you,” Frank said to the blanket, or the space between them, or wherever he’d been keeping it for years. “I just never said it where you could hear it.”
Jonah closed his eyes.
“I wanted it too much,” he said.
Frank’s voice broke—not loudly, just the sound of something giving way that had been held a long time. “I gave you too little.”
The room was quiet.
“When you’re home,” Frank said finally, “we’ll look at the annex file.”
Jonah gave the smallest breath that might have become a laugh if he’d had the strength for it.
“Maybe we should start with the hospital discharge papers,” Clara said.
Angus went back into the corridor and let the door close behind him.
Murphy was in the parking lot, leaning against her car.
He stopped beside her.
She looked at him for a long moment before she spoke. “You used what I told you.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t explain it. He had spent two weeks watching explanation become the thing men reached for when they wanted badly enough to be right. He didn’t want to reach for it now.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You trusted me with information and I used it without asking what it might cost you.”
Murphy looked at him. The parking lot was cold, the light flat and ordinary after the bright hospital corridor lights.
“Don’t make me afraid to trust you again,” she said.
“I won’t.”
She looked at him for another moment. Then she reached for his hand. Not because their relationship was fixed. But because she was still there.