Chapter 2 - The Man Who Knew the Cameras
Arthur stopped with his hand inside his jacket.
“Slowly,” Dominic said.
The older man withdrew a phone between two fingers. His other hand stayed open.
“I came because someone used your credentials to request a medical transfer in Arizona.”
Norah stepped forward. “A transfer where?”
“I haven’t found the destination.”
“You knew about my father.”
“I arranged his transport when he moved facilities last year.”
Her knees threatened to fold. Another piece of her life managed in rooms where she had never been invited.
Dominic took Arthur’s phone, placed it on the dresser, and asked for his weapon. Arthur surrendered it without argument.
“I’m not asking you to trust him,” Dominic told Norah. “I’m making sure he can’t interfere while we check.”
His unfamiliar phone vibrated.
He answered on speaker.
“Leila.”
A woman’s voice responded, crisp and awake. “I reached the night supervisor. Thomas Hayes is in the west lounge. Maintenance found a leak above his bed. She’s standing beside him now.”
Norah covered her mouth.
“Can I speak to him?”
A pause. A rustle. Then a familiar, uncertain voice.
“Hello?”
“Dad. It’s Norah.”
“Are you coming after school?”
Tears burned her eyes. “Soon.”
“I saved you an orange.”
She pressed a fist against her chest until she could answer.
“I know you did.”
Leila came back on the line. The facility was verifying every care instruction directly with its medical director. A local attorney and licensed security team were on their way. No one would move him without Norah’s authorization.
When the call ended, Norah sat on the edge of the mattress.
“Who is she?”
“An attorney who has spent five years telling me things I don’t enjoy hearing,” Dominic said.
Norah remembered Arthur bringing soup to her desk during a winter flu outbreak. He had placed it beside the keyboard without a word, then quietly canceled two appointments she had insisted she could manage. She wanted that memory to mean he was innocent. She wanted Dominic's steady voice to mean they were safe. But ordinary kindness could coexist with terrible choices; she had spent too long working here to deny that now. She asked her attorney's name again and saved it in her phone herself. A number she had chosen. A person whose loyalty did not belong to the man beside her. It felt absurdly small, and necessary. She was finished confusing being looked after with being listened to.
Arthur watched him. “You called Leila Grant?”
“Yes.”
“That means this becomes a legal matter.”
“It already is.”
Arthur’s expression shifted then, the smallest release of tension.
“Good.”
He reached slowly into his breast pocket and produced a folded envelope.
Norah recognized the paper before he opened it. Cream stock. Dominic’s private stationery.
Inside was a photograph of Arthur’s nineteen-year-old grandson entering a college dormitory.
“He received his yesterday,” Arthur said. “I received mine at noon. They wanted the service elevator unmonitored between two and three.”
“You didn’t tell me,” Dominic said.
“Neither did she.”
The words landed without accusation. That made them worse.
Norah looked from one man to the other. Whoever had arranged this understood exactly how love could make competent people reckless.
“What did they want from you afterward?” she asked.
Arthur’s silence answered before he did.
“To drive you to the airport.”
She imagined herself entering his car, grateful to see a familiar face.
Dominic turned away, bracing one hand against the dresser. When he faced them again, his voice was level.
“We stop answering unknown numbers. We preserve everything. Nobody goes anywhere alone.”
Norah stood.
“And we tell Leila about every account connected to my father.”
Dominic nodded.
“Every account,” she repeated. “Even the ones that make you look guilty.”
“Yes.”
Arthur’s phone lit up on the dresser.
This time, the sender’s name was visible.
Victor Falcone.
Dominic’s uncle had written only six words.
Is our little problem leaving tonight?
Arthur stared at it as if the screen had burned him.
Norah remembered Victor’s hand on her shoulder that afternoon, his warm smile, his casual question about whether she had ever visited Switzerland.
Dominic read the message once.
May you like
Then he looked at the open door.
“My uncle has keys to this floor,” he said.
