Chapter 5 - What Elena Recognized
My father refused to answer his phone for the rest of the afternoon.
Paul answered once.
“This has gotten completely out of control,” he said.
“Your company faxed an unauthorized transfer request for my son.”
“I’m looking into it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I have employees. Dispatchers. Contractors.”
“Did you send those men?”
“No.”
He hung up.
The neatness of his denial bothered me more than anger would have.
Later, Elena asked to speak with me privately.
We sat near the vending machines at the end of the corridor. She had changed into a clean hospital sweatshirt, but dried blood remained near one cuff.
“I remembered something,” she said.
One of the masked men had been on her floor before.
Not that night.
Weeks earlier.
“He brought an older patient back from dialysis,” she said. “I noticed because he complained about having to wait while the nurse finished discharge paperwork.”
“You know what company?”
“I didn’t then.”
She showed me a photograph the hospital transport coordinator had displayed while helping security identify local vendors.
The logo on one jacket belonged to Paul’s company.
Elena tapped one name on the employee list.
Michael Dugan.
“I think that’s him.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
I appreciated the answer.
“Seventy percent maybe. Not enough that I’d swear to it without seeing him.”
It was exactly the kind of caution I had been trained to respect.
We didn’t need Elena to magically solve anything. Hospital administrators already had a more concrete problem.
Someone had used valid vendor routing information to make the false transfer request appear believable.
That access did not come from a stranger.
Around eight that evening, Daniel began waking.
I was sitting beside him when his fingers moved against the sheet.
“Dad?”
I leaned over so quickly I knocked my coffee onto the floor.
“I’m here, buddy.”
His eyes opened halfway.
“My chest hurts.”
“I know.”
He stared around the room.
Then he noticed the restricted-visitor sign near the door.
“Is Aunt Tess mad?”
“Why would she be mad?”
His eyelids fluttered.
“Because I told the ambulance lady where we were.”
Something inside me tightened.
“Where were you?”
He whispered, “Uncle Paul’s garage.”
“What happened there?”
Daniel frowned as if assembling pieces through medication and exhaustion.
“The smell got bad.”
“What smell?”
“The stuff by the vans.”
He coughed.
I reached for the nurse call button.
Before I pressed it, Daniel caught my finger.
“Grandpa said not to tell people because Uncle Paul would lose his company.”
My father.
Again.
Then Daniel said something even worse.
May you like
“Grandpa came before the ambulance took me.”
My father had never mentioned being at the warehouse.
