Chapter 3 - What Lily StoleDetective Ruiz took Michael into an empty conference room.
I went with them.
“I want a lawyer,” Michael said.
Ruiz folded her arms.
“That’s your right.”
“But I’ll tell Daniel what happened.”
“If you tell him in front of me, I can use it.”
“I know.”
Michael looked at me.
For the first time since our father’s funeral, my younger brother looked old.
“I’ve been lying to you for six months.”
“Start talking.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Mercer Strategic Supply almost went under last year.”
I knew his company had struggled.
I hadn’t known how badly.
“We lost two government contracts. Interest rates went up. I had loans secured against everything.”
“You told me you recovered.”
“I did.”
“How?”
“A contract with Bradley.”
Ruiz pulled out her notebook.
“For what?”
“Research equipment. Refrigeration units. Controlled storage. Specialized pumps.”
“For which lab?”
Michael hesitated.
“The Halpern Biomedical Laboratory.”
Lily’s lab.
I felt my hands clench.
“Your company supplied her professor?”
“Yes.”
“Professor who?”
“Dr. Victor Halpern.”
I knew the name.
Lily had mentioned him at Thanksgiving.
Brilliant.
Demanding.
One of the youngest department heads in Bradley’s history.
She idolized him.
Michael continued.
“Halpern’s team is developing an injectable delivery system for an anti-inflammatory compound. The project has corporate backing.”
“Which corporation?” Ruiz asked.
“Veyron Therapeutics.”
I knew that name too.
Everyone did.
Pharmaceutical giant.
Billions in annual revenue.
“What does this have to do with Lily?” I asked.
Michael stared at the table.
“Three weeks ago, she called me.”
“Why you?”
“Because she recognized my company name on invoices.”
“What invoices?”
“Equipment purchases that didn’t make sense.”
Michael explained.
Lily had been helping a doctoral student reconcile laboratory inventory.
She found refrigeration units listed as installed at Bradley that had never arrived.
Then pumps.
Then specialized testing systems.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment.
All supposedly supplied by Michael’s company.
“But you did supply it,” I said.
“No.”
My stomach dropped.
“Someone used my company’s vendor credentials.”
Ruiz leaned forward.
“How much?”
“Just over eight hundred thousand dollars.”
I stood.
“You knew someone stole almost a million dollars through your company and didn’t report it?”
Michael flinched.
“I was going to.”
“When?”
“When I knew who was doing it.”
“You protect yourself while my daughter investigates?”
“I told her to stop.”
“You should have told me!”
“I know!”
His shout echoed through the room.
Ruiz raised one hand.
“Keep going.”
Michael’s voice broke.
“She didn’t stop.”
Of course she didn’t.
Lily had inherited that from me.
At seven she climbed a thirty-foot oak because I told her the upper branches were unsafe.
At fourteen she challenged a school administrator for suspending another student unfairly.
At nineteen she apparently uncovered a fraud network and decided to investigate it herself.
“What did she find?” Ruiz asked.
“More than fake invoices.”
Michael explained that test results connected to Halpern’s research had been manipulated.
The experimental compound caused severe reactions in animal trials.
Inflammation.
Cardiac irregularities.
Organ damage in some subjects.
But the official reports showed much safer outcomes.
“Who changed the data?” I asked.
“Lily didn’t know.”
“But Halpern knew?”
“She believed he did.”
“Why?”
“Because she found two versions of the same datasets.”
Ruiz stopped writing.
“Original and altered?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“A protected research server.”
“How did an undergraduate student access it?”
“She didn’t. Someone gave her access.”
“Who?”
Michael shook his head.
“She refused to tell me.”
Three people.
Lily had written three attackers.
Maybe the unnamed source was one of them.
“Why were you at the science building?” Ruiz asked.
“Lily called me at nine thirty last night. She sounded scared. Said somebody had been inside her apartment.”
“What was missing?”
“Nothing.”
“Then how did she know?”
“A photo of Daniel and Lily had been moved.”
The room became silent.
I remembered that photograph.
Lily and me standing beside my old fishing boat.
I had given it to her freshman year.
Michael continued.
“She thought they wanted a flash drive.”
“What flash drive?”
“The evidence.”
I turned away.
My nineteen-year-old daughter had been walking around campus carrying evidence against people willing to beat her nearly to death.
“She asked me to meet her at Hartwell,” Michael said. “She wanted to show me something before going to the police.”
“So you drove two hours from Richmond?” Ruiz asked.
“I was already in town.”
“That contradicts your text.”
“Yes.”
“Why were you here?”
“Meeting Halpern.”
I looked at him.
“You were working with him.”
Michael didn’t answer.
I grabbed the front of his coat.
Ruiz stood immediately.
“Mr. Mercer.”
“You were working with the man threatening my daughter?”
Michael pushed my hands away.
“I was trying to make him confess.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
His silence told me enough.
Michael had been involved.
Maybe not in the attack.
But involved.
“How much?” I asked.
“What?”
“How much money did they pay you?”
Michael looked ashamed.
“Two hundred thousand.”
The room narrowed.
“For what?”
“To keep quiet about the false invoices.”
I hit the table so hard the coffee jumped.
“You sold your silence.”
“I was drowning!”
“And Lily paid for it.”
His face collapsed.
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.”
Ruiz stepped between us.
“What happened at Hartwell?”
Michael stared at his hands.
“I entered with Lily around ten forty-five. She said the evidence was hidden in her lab locker. When we got upstairs, the hallway lights were off.”
“Normal?”
“No.”
“We reached the third floor. Then someone hit me from behind.”
“You saw who?”
“Not at first.”
“What happened next?”
“I woke up in the chemical storage room.”
“You were locked inside?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.”
“But security footage shows Lily leaving twelve minutes after you entered.”
“I know.”
“Meaning you were still inside.”
Michael nodded.
“I broke the emergency latch and got out. Lily was gone.”
“Did you call police?”
His jaw tightened.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I heard voices.”
“Whose?”
“One was Halpern.”
My pulse rose.
“And the others?”
“I didn’t recognize them.”
“What did they say?”
Michael looked at me.
“One asked whether they had found the drive.”
“And?”
“Halpern said no.”
Ruiz leaned forward.
“Anything else?”
Michael nodded.
“He said, ‘The girl doesn’t have it anymore.’”
My mind raced.
“Then who does?”
Michael looked at me.
“Daniel, that’s the part you need to understand.”
He swallowed.
“Before Lily went upstairs, she gave me something.”
“A flash drive?”
“No.”
He reached into his coat.
Ruiz immediately moved her hand toward her holster.
Michael slowly removed a small brass key.
“She told me if anything happened, I should give this to you.”
I stared at it.
The key had a number engraved on it.
217.
“What's it open?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
Ruiz took an evidence bag from her pocket.
“We’ll find out.”
My phone rang.
Hospital.
I answered immediately.
“Mr. Mercer?” a nurse said.
“Yes.”
“You need to come back to your daughter’s room.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“What happened?”
“She’s safe.”
“Then what is it?”
“She woke up asking for you.”
“I’m coming.”
The nurse hesitated.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“A man tried to enter her room.”
My blood ran cold.
“Who?”
“He said he was a physician.”
“Was he?”
“No.”
Ruiz was already standing.
“Where is he?”
“He left when security approached.”
“Description?”
The nurse gave one.
Male.
Mid-forties.
Tall.
Dark hair.
Gray suit.
Michael turned white.
“You recognize that description?” Ruiz asked.
He nodded.
“Who?”
Michael whispered:
“Veyron’s head of research security.”
Ruiz headed for the door.
I followed.
Before we reached it, my phone vibrated again.
This time, a text.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
Lily asleep in her hospital bed.
Taken from inside the room.
Beneath it were seven words.
May you like
GIVE US WHAT SHE TOOK.
OR NEXT TIME SHE DOESN’T WAKE UP.
Related Stories
