Chapter 3 - THREE BOYS WITH FAMOUS NAMES
By noon, the story had changed.
According to the university, Emma had been involved in a “personal dispute.”
According to the police, there had been “insufficient evidence of intent.”
According to the three families, their sons were “shaken by an unfortunate confrontation.”
None of them mentioned the broken jaw.
None mentioned the missing security footage.
None mentioned why three young men had been together outside a science building at eleven forty-seven on a Thursday night.
I sat in the hospital conference room with Sloan, Vivienne Park—the attorney I had quietly retained that morning—and a former detective named Arthur Kane.
Arthur had retired six years earlier.
He had also once investigated me.
He knew exactly who I had been.
“You called me the Ghost,” I said.
Arthur shrugged.
“You were a rumor with a pulse.”
“And now?”
“Now you're a man sitting in a hospital trying not to become a rumor again.”
Sloan placed a folder on the table.
“The boys' phones were collected.”
“By whom?”
“Campus police.”
“Then we need copies before somebody changes them.”
Vivienne looked at me.
“We can subpoena them.”
“No.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You don't trust the process?”
“I don't trust the people controlling the process.”
Arthur leaned back.
“Smart.”
Vivienne sighed.
“You're going to make my job difficult.”
“I hired you because difficult is what you do.”
She almost smiled.
“Fair.”
Arthur opened the folder.
“Ethan Cole, twenty-one. Brandon Hale, twenty-two. Tyler Whitmore, twenty-one.”
He placed three photographs on the table.
“They belong to the Founders Society.”
“What is that?”
“Officially? Alumni networking.”
“And unofficially?”
Arthur's expression was grim.
“Rich students entertaining themselves by pretending they run the city.”
Sloan added, “The society has access to private university facilities.”
“Like the science building?”
“Yes.”
Arthur pointed at Ethan.
“He was seen arguing with Emma two days before the attack.”
“About?”
“Northstar.”
I looked at Sloan.
“What exactly did Emma discover?”
He opened the laptop.
“Northstar wasn't merely a research project. It was a clinical data repository.”
Vivienne frowned.
“Meaning?”
“Patient trial data. Drug responses. Adverse events. Genetic markers.”
Arthur continued.
“Someone altered the records.”
“Why?”
Sloan looked at me.
“To make a failed treatment appear successful.”
Silence.
I thought of Emma's work.
She had spent years believing she was helping develop treatments for rare diseases.
Instead, she had discovered that someone had buried patient deaths beneath manipulated statistics.
“How many?”
Sloan hesitated.
“We don't know.”
“Find out.”
Vivienne closed the folder.
“This is now larger than an assault case.”
“Yes.”
“Possibly federal.”
“Then let federal investigators come.”
She studied me.
“You say that like you don't trust them either.”
“I trust evidence.”
Arthur gave a quiet laugh.
“That's why you were dangerous.”
I looked at him.
He didn't flinch.
“Back then,” he said, “you never threatened people. You just knew where the truth was buried.”
I remembered.
That had been my reputation.
Not violence.
Information.
I had known which accounts were false, which judges had debts, which businessmen had hidden partners, which politicians were pretending not to know what happened in their own cities.
Then I met Emma.
She didn't care about any of it.
She once told me that the most frightening thing about power wasn't what powerful people could do.
It was what they could convince ordinary people to accept.
I had laughed.
She hadn't.
Now I understood.
My phone rang.
A number I didn't recognize.
I answered.
A young male voice said, “Mr. Walker?”
“Yes.”
“I'm Tyler Whitmore.”
I stood.
Arthur's hand moved toward his jacket.
“Why are you calling me?”
“I didn't want to hurt her.”
My eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“I didn't.”
“Then explain.”
“I was there.”
“That's not an explanation.”
“I tried to stop Ethan.”
“Why didn't you?”
A long silence.
“Because my father told me what would happen if I talked.”
“Your father?”
“He said Emma was dangerous.”
My voice became colder.
“Where are you?”
“I can't tell you.”
“Then why call?”
“Because they took something from her.”
I looked at Sloan.
“What?”
“A blue flash drive.”
Emma had hidden the memory card.
Apparently there had been another copy.
“Who has it?”
“Brandon.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Tyler.”
“I swear.”
I heard another voice in the background.
“Tyler!”
The line went dead.
Arthur stood.
“Trace it.”
Sloan shook his head.
“Already trying.”
My phone rang again.
This time it was the hospital.
Emma's room.
I answered.
A nurse was crying.
“Mr. Walker, you need to come upstairs.”
“Why?”
“There was an attempt to enter her room.”
My body went cold.
“Who?”
“Security stopped him.”
“Who?”
She whispered the name.
“Detective Harris.”
I ended the call.
Arthur stood.
“That changes things.”
I was already walking.
When we reached Emma's room, two security officers were outside.
Harris was gone.
The nurse handed me something she had found beneath Emma's pillow.
A folded piece of paper.
Three words were written on it.
STOP LOOKING, DANIEL.
Emma hadn't written it.
I stared at the handwriting.
Arthur read over my shoulder.
“Whoever wrote that knows your real name.”
I folded the paper.
“No.”
I looked toward Emma.
“They know much more than that.”
Because nobody had called me Daniel in nineteen years.
May you like
And nobody had ever called me Ghost in writing.
Until now.
