Chapter 5 - THE DOCTOR WHO SOLD MY FATHER
At 2:16 A.M., Adrian Blackthorne made one phone call.
By 2:22, Dr. Nathan Cole's private residence was surrounded.
I watched the operation unfold through the security monitors.
Adrian had refused to let me go.
I had argued.
He had refused again.
Then he'd said something that silenced me.
"Harper, if I lose you, I lose the only person who may know how to save your father."
I didn't know what to do with that sentence.
Especially the way he'd said lose you.
Like the possibility mattered personally.
Marco led the team into the doctor's house.
But the rooms were empty.
Furniture overturned.
Drawers open.
A glass of whiskey abandoned on the kitchen counter.
Someone had left in a hurry.
"Boss," Marco said through his earpiece. "We found blood."
Adrian's jaw tightened.
"Whose?"
"Unknown."
Then a guard called from the basement.
"Marco! You need to see this."
The camera moved down a staircase.
A locked door stood beneath the house.
Inside was a room filled with medical equipment.
Hospital records.
Prescription bottles.
And photographs.
Dozens of photographs.
Of me.
Walking to work.
Buying groceries.
Leaving Mercy General.
Standing outside my apartment.
I covered my mouth.
Someone had been watching me for months.
Adrian turned toward his security team.
"Find every person who had access to this property."
Marco picked up a folder.
"Boss, there's a payment ledger."
He opened it.
"Dr. Cole received two hundred thousand dollars every month from Sterling Holdings."
My stomach dropped.
"Victoria's family?"
Adrian nodded.
"Her father's company."
The truth began arranging itself into something terrifying.
Victoria hadn't simply disliked Evelyn.
She'd been searching for something.
Her family had been paying my father's doctor.
And someone had kidnapped him to force me into cooperating.
"Why?" I whispered.
Adrian didn't answer immediately.
Then he said, "Because your father has something that could destroy them."
I looked at the photographs again.
One had been taken inside my apartment.
While I was sleeping.
I felt sick.
"How long have they been inside my life?"
Adrian's expression hardened.
"Too long."
At sunrise, Marco returned with a new discovery.
A hidden compartment beneath Dr. Cole's desk contained an encrypted drive.
His technicians recovered a short video.
It showed Dr. Cole speaking directly into a camera.
"If you're watching this, I'm probably dead."
I gripped the back of a chair.
The doctor looked exhausted.
"I made a terrible mistake. Sterling Holdings paid me to monitor Daniel Quinn. At first, they only wanted information about his medical condition."
He swallowed.
"Then they ordered me to alter his medication."
My heart stopped.
"No."
Dr. Cole continued.
"Daniel's heart failure has been deliberately worsened over the past eighteen months."
I stumbled backward.
Adrian caught me.
"My father wasn't just getting sicker," I whispered.
"They were making him sick."
The doctor looked over his shoulder in the recording.
"I refused to continue when they demanded I kill him. That's when they threatened my family."
His voice broke.
"Daniel discovered the truth. He told me that if anything happened to him, I should find his daughter."
The screen flickered.
"Harper, your father left something for you."
Dr. Cole held up a small envelope.
"Look where Rebecca taught you to count the stars."
The recording ended.
I stared at the screen.
Then a memory struck me.
My mother.
A warm summer night.
A little girl sitting on the roof of a small farmhouse.
Counting stars beside her mother.
I knew exactly where the doctor meant.
But there was one problem.
The farmhouse had burned down nineteen years earlier.
And according to my father, the fire had destroyed everything.
Then Adrian's phone rang.
Marco answered.
His face changed.
"Boss, we found Dr. Cole."
"Where?"
"Floating in the Hudson River."
A pause.
"And there's something carved into the inside of his wedding ring."
Adrian looked up.
"What?"
May you like
Marco swallowed.
"Nightingale is already inside your house."
