Chapter 13 - The Price of a Lie

Paul Keene stood between me and the door, wearing a hotel maintenance jacket over a black shirt. His hands trembled, but his expression was hard.

"Give me the note," he said.

"You're in my father's office. You're not getting anything."

"Blake says the note belongs to him."

I backed around the desk, putting heavy walnut between us. "Tell Blake he can come ask for it himself."

Paul reached into his jacket. Before he could pull out whatever he carried, I hit the silent panic button Dad had insisted on installing after a robbery years ago. The button still worked. Two building guards appeared, and Paul bolted into the hall. They caught him at the stairwell with a stun device and a stolen office pass.

In police custody, Paul admitted Blake had ordered him to remove the prosthetic belly from Vanessa's suite after the party. He also admitted collecting envelopes from Cole's office. He insisted he knew nothing about Nora's abduction.

I didn't know what to believe. But I did know we had lost valuable time.

Nora called from her secure room. "Remember the counterfeit machines? I found another invoice copied into Aaron's files. The foundation delivered respiratory monitors to a clinic in Rockford. Their warning alarms failed during a power cut. A baby was injured."

"We sent broken machines to sick kids?"

"They weren't the equipment we paid for. Someone swapped approved units for cheap copies and pocketed the difference."

I called the foundation's operations team and issued an immediate suspension and recall request for every North Pier-supplied unit. Real people depended on those machines; we couldn't wait for the case to close. We contacted facilities, regulators, and independent inspectors, and arranged certified replacements at the foundation's expense.

At one clinic I met a tired nurse who had slept three hours in two days. "Your name is on every shipping carton," she told me. "People trusted that name."

"They shouldn't have had to gamble on it," I said.

She had traced Paul's badge to Harbor Seven, an unused freight building at North Pier. The address appeared on the invoices Nora had saved.

"We're preparing to search it," she said.

"There's something you need to know first."

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I read my father's six-digit number aloud.

Brooks was silent for a beat. "Daniel, that isn't a door code. It's the identifier for a container scheduled to leave the country tonight."