Chapter 9 - THE DOOR THAT WAS OPEN
Emma called Jo and asked her to check on Frank. Nathaniel arranged for hospital security—not his own staff—to restrict unauthorized visitors and review the transfer paperwork.
"I don't want more guards working for people we don't trust," Emma said.
"Neither do I."
At her apartment building, the front door wasn't broken. It was standing open.
Emma caught Nathaniel's sleeve. "I locked that."
Inside, drawers lay upside down. Her mother's photograph had been knocked off the shelf. The little red recipe box where Frank kept old receipts was gone.
Emma crouched to pick up the broken frame. Her mother had died four years earlier, and the glass was the only part of the photograph she had never replaced.
"Who does this?" she whispered.
Nathaniel called the police. He didn't touch the overturned drawers or let Emma walk farther inside.
"My dad was scared of giving me the truth," Emma said. "I thought he didn't trust me."
"Maybe he knew how much it would cost you."
"He should have let me decide."
On the floor beside the empty recipe-box spot, Emma found a scrap caught beneath a chair leg. It was the corner of a printed hospital audit. A date had been circled in blue ink: MAY 14.
Frank's words returned to her. The one thing she can't destroy is the date.
Nathaniel examined the paper. "May 14 is when our board renewed Harborwell's contract."
May you like
His phone chimed with an incoming file from the corporate legal team. He opened it, read the approval page, and went completely still.
"Emma," he said, "the signature authorizing Harborwell is mine."
