Chapter 4 - The Woman Who Wasn't Supposed to Be There
Julian remembered a dozen envelopes Vivian had opened before bringing them to him. She'd said sorting his mail would spare him stress. He had thanked her. Now every small kindness seemed to have two meanings, and he hated himself for doubting even the genuine ones.
"It doesn't mean she faked every smile," Maya said, as though she could read his thoughts. "It means you deserve facts before you decide what those smiles meant."
Maya didn't tell Julian about the key until they were outside.
The night air was cold. Somewhere inside the ballroom, the band had started playing again, absurdly cheerful, as if a man hadn't just walked for the first time in a year and a half.
"Those are my initials," Maya said, opening her hand.
Julian stared. "Your name is Maya Rao?"
"You knew that already."
"My father hired a Maya Rao." He searched her face. "A junior investigator. She sent him a warning about the hospital contract. Then she disappeared."
"That was me. I didn't disappear. I was fired."
Maya told him what she had never told anyone at the hotel. Two years earlier, she'd worked in compliance for the Whitmore Foundation. She found payments to a private medical company called North Ridge Recovery. Patients' records had been altered. Signatures repeated across files. Before she could finish her report, her supervisor told her the investigation was closed.
"I lost my career," she said. "My savings. Then my mother got sick. This job paid cash quickly."
"Why didn't you come to me?"
"You were in the hospital, and Vivian controlled your mail."
He looked away.
His legs trembled. Maya guided him to a bench, but he refused the wheelchair a guard offered.
"If my father trusted you, I need you now," Julian said.
"You don't even know if I'm telling the truth."
"You're the only one tonight who hasn't asked me to stop moving."
He showed her the message from his father's phone. Maya copied the number.
"We'll go to the police," Julian said.
"After I show you something."
She pulled up an old photo from her compliance archive: Victor Whitmore in a clinic hallway beside a small greenhouse. Beside him stood Dr. Leonard Price, Julian's neurologist.
Julian went still.
May you like
"Price told me my spinal cord was destroyed."
Maya enlarged the image. On the wall behind Price hung a recent construction permit bearing Graham Vale's signature.
