Chapter 8 - The Woman Who Used Laura's Name)
The surveillance image from First Commonwealth Bank was grainy but clear enough to prove one thing.
The woman was not Laura.
She wore a dark coat, sunglasses, and a scarf over her hair. Her face was partly obscured, but her height and build were wrong.
She had entered the vault using identification in Laura Harper's name.
The bank employee who assisted her said the documents looked authentic.
The signature matched.
The access code matched.
The key matched.
Grant stared at the image on Detective Torres's tablet.
"Camille?"
"We're comparing gait and measurements."
"It looks like her."
"It may."
"She knew about the box."
"Possibly."
Grant looked closer.
The woman carried a leather folder when she entered.
When she left, she carried a small metal case.
"What was in the box?"
"We don't know."
"Do you have the entry record before this?"
"Yes."
Torres slid another document across the table.
The safe deposit box had not been opened in four years.
The previous access was two weeks before Laura died.
Grant rubbed his face.
"So Laura put something there. Nobody touched it for years. Then four days ago, someone impersonates her and takes it."
"That's what it appears."
"Four days ago was before Mia's birthday."
"Yes."
Grant looked at Torres.
"Why now?"
"Maybe someone learned the box existed."
"How?"
Torres gave him a long look.
"Maybe Mia found something."
Grant's stomach tightened.
He went to Mia.
They were staying temporarily in a secure guesthouse owned by Evelyn outside the city. Mia sat at the kitchen table drawing while two officers remained outside.
Grant placed a copy of the bank image in front of her.
"Have you seen this woman?"
Mia looked.
Her pencil stopped.
Grant noticed.
"You have."
Mia nodded.
"Where?"
"At home."
"When?"
"Last week."
"Inside?"
She shook her head.
"At the gate."
"What were you doing?"
"Coming home from school."
"Did she speak to you?"
"No."
"Did you see her face?"
Mia hesitated.
"She had glasses."
Grant sat beside her.
"Mia, did you find anything about a bank box?"
She looked down.
"Maybe."
His heart accelerated.
"What?"
"In Mom's book."
"What book?"
"Not the notebook you found."
Grant waited.
Mia went upstairs and returned with an old children's book, The Secret Garden. Laura had read it to her when she was five.
Inside the back cover, written in tiny faded ink, were numbers.
A bank branch number.
A box number.
And a six-digit code.
Grant stared.
"How did you know what this was?"
"I didn't."
"Did you tell anyone?"
Mia's eyes shifted.
"Camille."
Grant closed his eyes.
"When?"
"She saw me looking at it. She asked what the numbers were. I said maybe Mom's secret."
"Then what?"
"She took the book."
"But you have it."
"I stole it back."
Grant almost corrected the word, then didn't.
"Did she copy the numbers?"
"I think so."
There it was.
The reason for the sudden urgency.
Camille had learned about the safe deposit box.
Four days before Mia's birthday, someone emptied it.
Then Camille started searching Mia's room for an envelope.
Two separate secrets.
Or one connected chain.
Grant called Torres.
Within hours, detectives obtained additional footage.
The woman from the bank had arrived in a black sedan registered to a shell company.
The driver never entered the bank.
Traffic cameras followed the sedan for six miles before losing it in an underground garage.
The shell company was Wren Holdings.
Grant remembered Laura's notebook.
Wren Holdings had been on Northbridge's transfer list.
"Could Laura have created Wren?" Grant asked Evelyn.
"I don't know."
"Could Camille control it?"
"I don't know."
"Could Charles?"
"I don't know."
Grant slammed his palm against the table.
"I am tired of nobody knowing."
Evelyn did not flinch.
"Then stop asking only what happened after Laura got sick."
Grant stared at her.
"What does that mean?"
Evelyn sat down.
"There was something before the cancer."
"What?"
"Laura was investigating Harper Biomedical."
Grant frowned.
"My company?"
"Your father's company then."
Grant's father, Thomas Harper, had founded the business. He died eight years before Laura.
"What was she investigating?"
"A trial."
Grant's face tightened.
Harper Biomedical had manufactured diagnostic equipment, not drugs. Trials were validation studies.
"Which product?"
"I don't know the name. Laura called it Project Sparrow."
Grant went still.
Sparrow.
Laura's birds.
Wren.
He began to see a pattern.
"What happened?"
"She said data had been manipulated."
Grant stood.
"That's impossible."
"Is it?"
"My father would never—"
Evelyn's expression stopped him.
"You don't know what your father would have done to protect the company."
Grant walked to the window.
This was becoming something he did not want.
Camille abusing Mia was simple in the ugliest possible way.
This was not simple.
This reached backward through Laura, Charles, Bellweather, Pike, and now the company his father had built.
"What did Laura find?"
"She never told me everything."
"Why not?"
"Because she became afraid of what telling me would do."
"To you?"
"To everyone."
Grant turned.
Evelyn looked at Mia, who had left the room.
"She said Project Sparrow involved children."
Grant's blood went cold.
"What children?"
"I don't know."
The doorbell rang.
One of the officers answered.
A federal agent stood outside.
Special Agent Daniel Ross, Department of Justice.
Meredith Sloan's warning returned to Grant.
Federal agents.
Ross entered, showed credentials, and asked to speak privately.
They sat in Evelyn's study.
Ross placed a sealed evidence envelope on the desk.
"Mr. Harper, are you familiar with Project Sparrow?"
Grant stared at him.
"Apparently everyone is except me."
Ross did not smile.
"We reopened an investigation three months ago after receiving an anonymous package."
"From whom?"
"We don't know."
"What was in it?"
"Internal Harper Biomedical documents from seventeen years ago."
Grant's pulse thudded.
"My father was alive."
"Yes."
"What did they show?"
Ross looked directly at him.
"That a pediatric diagnostic study produced results indicating the device missed a dangerous condition in a significant number of children."
Grant stopped breathing.
Ross continued.
"Those results were replaced before regulatory submission."
"Who replaced them?"
"We're investigating."
"My father?"
"His signature appears on approvals."
Grant looked away.
"No."
"There are also signatures from outside counsel."
"Charles?"
"No."
Grant looked back.
Ross opened the envelope.
He removed a photocopy.
At the bottom of the page was a signature.
Laura Harper.
Grant stared at it.
"She didn't work for the company."
"She worked briefly in compliance before you married."
Grant knew Laura had been a compliance consultant.
He did not know she had touched Sparrow.
Ross spoke softly.
"Mr. Harper, the anonymous package included a note."
"What did it say?"
Ross slid the note over.
Three typed lines.
LAURA TRIED TO FIX WHAT SHE SIGNED.
THEY MADE HER LOOK UNSTABLE.
THE CHILD IS NEXT.
Grant read the last line twice.
"The child is next."
Ross nodded.
"We believed it referred to a child involved in the old study."
Grant looked toward the room where Mia was drawing.
"But now?"
May you like
Ross's expression darkened.
"Now we're not sure."
