Chapter 5 - THE DEAD MAN’S SWITCH
The clinic room went dead silent. The only sound was the low, rhythmic hum of the X-ray machine cooling down.
Olivia stared at her aunt, the silver locket heavy and cold in her palm. Her mother. The elegant, fiercely compassionate woman who had founded charities, who used to brush Olivia’s hair and sing her to sleep. A criminal? A woman who took bribes that cost people their lives?
“No,” Olivia said. The word was small, instinctual. “No, that’s a lie. My mother wouldn't do that.”
“The proof is in the locket, Liv,” Eleanor said softly, her face lined with sorrow. “There’s a micro-SD card hidden behind the portrait. It contains the bank transfers. The emails. Richard found it in her effects after the crash. He has spent three years suffocating under the weight of it, trying to keep her foundation’s name clean so that your name stays clean.”
Olivia’s thumb brushed the latch of the locket. She popped it open.
Inside was a faded photograph of her mother holding a ten-year-old Olivia. But as she pressed a fingernail against the edge of the tiny frame, it gave way. A microscopic black memory card slipped out, landing in her palm.
Evan stepped closer, his eyes on the tiny card. “If that’s true, why send a strike team to my warehouse? Why hunt us down today?”
“Because Richard isn’t the only one who knows,” Eleanor said grimly. “The board of directors found out two days ago. Sterling, the CEO, discovered the discrepancy in the old ledgers. He knows the hardware is defective. And he knows Richard has been covering it up.”
Simon spoke up, his voice a low rumble. “So the board is cleaning house.”
“Exactly,” Eleanor said. “Sterling wants Richard gone, and he wants the liability buried permanently. If Sterling gets his hands on you, Olivia, he’ll make sure you have a tragic ‘medical complication’ during a surgery. He sent that strike team, not Richard.”
Olivia felt the blood drain from her face. “My father didn’t send those men?”
“Your father is currently locked in his own office at Hartwell Tower, being forced to sign his resignation under threat of your life,” Eleanor revealed. “I slipped out before Sterling’s men could detain me.”
Olivia looked down at the memory card. Then she looked at Evan.
“You have a laptop in that van?” she asked.
Evan nodded.
“Read it,” Olivia said, holding the card out to him. “If my mother was a monster, I need to see it with my own eyes.”
They moved back to the van. The South Boston clinic felt too exposed now. Simon parked the van in the deepest, darkest corner of the underground garage, killing the engine to preserve silence.
Leo was fast asleep in the back, his small chest rising and falling beneath his winter coat. Evan booted up a rugged, encrypted laptop. He inserted the SD card.
The screen glowed blue in the dark van.
“It’s password protected,” Evan murmured, his fingers flying across the keys. “AES-256 encryption. It would take a supercomputer a hundred years to crack this by brute force.”
“Try ‘Rose’,” Olivia said, staring at the locket in her hands. “Capital R.”
Evan typed it in. The screen flashed red. Incorrect.
“Try my birthday. 081490.”
Incorrect.
Olivia closed her eyes. Her leg was burning terribly now, the pain radiating up to her hip. She tried to think of her mother. Not the philanthropist. The woman. What did she value most?
She looked at Leo, sleeping peacefully despite the danger surrounding him. A mother’s instinct. Protection.
“Try ‘Potential’,” Olivia whispered, her voice cracking. It was the word she hated most. The word the doctors used. Neurological potential.
Evan typed it.
The screen turned green. Access Granted.
Files cascaded across the screen. Hundreds of PDFs, emails, and bank statements. Evan clicked on the most recent document, dated three days before the fatal car crash.
It was an email draft from her mother to the FDA whistle-blower hotline.
Olivia leaned forward, reading the words bathed in the screen’s harsh light.
To whom it may concern. I have uncovered a massive conspiracy within Hartwell Medical. Our CEO, Thomas Sterling, has been purchasing substandard titanium alloy to cut costs, hiding the metallurgical reports from the board. I was tricked into signing the authorization forms. They are threatening my family if I speak out. I am taking this public.
Olivia let out a ragged, tearing sob.
Her mother hadn't taken a bribe. She had been framed by Sterling. She was trying to save people. And Sterling had killed her for it.
“Eleanor,” Olivia said, looking up, tears streaming down her face. “Aunt Eleanor, she was innocent.”
But Eleanor wasn't looking at the screen. She was looking out the windshield of the van.
“I know, sweetheart,” Eleanor said. Her voice was entirely different now. It wasn’t sad. It was terrifyingly flat.
Olivia froze.
Simon reached for his gun, but he was too late.
Eleanor raised a small, suppressed pistol and pointed it directly at Simon’s head.
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“I’m sorry, Olivia,” Eleanor said, her eyes dead and cold. “But Sterling promised me the CEO position once your father is out of the picture. And I really need that memory card.”
Before anyone could react, the back doors of the van were violently wrenched open from the outside.
