Chapter 2 - Harbor House
Clara refused Leo’s car until the emergency dispatcher told her the police would need at least twenty minutes to reach Northside. Harbor House was twelve minutes away in good weather, and freezing rain had turned the streets into black glass. She hated accepting anything from Leo Costello, especially after watching the ease with which he had folded Richard against a desk, but hatred did not matter while Chloe was seizing.
“Your driver stays below the speed limit,” she said as they entered the rear of the waiting sedan. “No calls about Richard until I know my sister is alive.”
Leo gave the order without argument.
Harbor House’s medical wing smelled of disinfectant and overheated air. Clara found Chloe conscious beneath a silver warming blanket, her copper-colored wheelchair parked beside the bed. Electrodes marked her temples. Her limbs still trembled from medication, but her hazel eyes sharpened when Clara rushed in.
Chloe had been born with a cortical malformation that caused unpredictable seizures and weakened the muscles along her left side. None of it had dulled her intelligence or her talent for noticing what other people dismissed. She illustrated fantastical birds, remembered every nurse’s birthday, and weaponized sarcasm whenever strangers spoke about her instead of to her. Harbor House gave her accessible independence. That was what Richard had threatened each time he mentioned insurance—not merely treatment, but the adult life Chloe had fought to build.
“You look worse than I do,” Chloe murmured.
Clara laughed once and then began crying. She pressed her forehead against Chloe’s, careful of the wires. “That is objectively false.”
Dr. Mina Shah waited until Clara could breathe again before explaining that Chloe’s anticonvulsant level was dangerously low. The electronic chart showed every dose had been administered. The sealed blister packs in the medication cabinet appeared correct, yet preliminary testing suggested the tablets contained mostly starch.
“Counterfeit?” Clara asked.
“Possibly. We have isolated the shipment and notified the state.” Dr. Shah looked toward Leo, who remained near the door. “Is he family?”
“No,” Clara and Leo answered together.
Chloe’s mouth twitched despite the exhaustion.
When the doctor left, Clara showed Chloe the surveillance photographs. Her sister’s humor vanished. She touched the image dated tomorrow with one unsteady finger.
“That man came here last week.”
“Richard?”
Chloe nodded. “He said he was checking insurance authorizations. He asked whether you ever took work home and whether you kept copies of shipping reports.” She swallowed. “I told him you don’t discuss work with me. He smelled like a Christmas-tree-shaped air freshener.”
Pine cologne.
Clara closed her eyes. Richard had not discovered Chloe during tonight’s assault. He had walked into the cubicle already knowing exactly which threat would make Clara hesitate.
Chloe reached beneath the sketchbook on her bedside table and removed a torn shipping label. “I found this stuck to the bottom of my medication carton. The orderly said to throw it away, but the numbers looked wrong.”
Clara took it. The printed destination was Harbor House, but the routing strip beneath it carried Northside’s warehouse code and an impossible gross weight. The carton was listed as 2.4 pounds heavier than the same medication shipment had been the previous month.
Leo moved closer. On his right hand was a silver ring carved with a small compass rose. Chloe looked at it, then opened her sketchbook. She turned to a charcoal drawing of a man’s hand holding her medication carton. A matching compass flashed from his cuff.
“The insurance man with Richard wore that symbol,” she said.
Leo’s face emptied.
“Who?” Clara demanded.
He did not avoid her eyes. “Julian Voss. My chief financial adviser.”
The room became very quiet.
Leo explained that a Costello holding company owned forty-one percent of Northside. Clara had known shadow investors existed, but not that the most feared man in Boston effectively signed her paychecks. Leo’s organization controlled illegal gambling, protection rackets, and several unions. He did not soften those facts or call them misunderstandings.
“But no narcotics,” he said. “No medical supply trade. No business that uses children or patients as cover.”
“You want credit for selecting your crimes?” Clara asked.
“No.” His voice remained level. “I want you to understand why this code should not exist.” He indicated HHC-17 on the badge. “It belongs to an internal audit I opened three weeks ago. Only Julian, Richard, and I knew it.”
Clara thought of the tea appearing on her desk, Leo’s silent repairs, and his Thursday visits. “You weren’t auditing Richard. You were watching me.”
“At first, I was watching the discrepancies you kept correcting. Then I realized you were the only person in that office who wasn’t creating them.”
Leo admitted he had ordered a background check after Clara’s corrections began interfering with the false balances. He knew about Chloe, Clara’s rent, and the absence of disciplinary complaints in her personnel file. He had stopped the surveillance when it became clear she was innocent, but he had not told her it happened. Clara made him say each fact in front of Ward. Whatever else followed, she would not build trust on a prettier version of his conduct.
Chloe’s monitor began to beep faster. Clara took her hand.
Leo placed the red badge and torn label into separate evidence bags from the nurse’s station, then laid them on the table rather than pocketing them.
“The police get these,” he said. “And if you tell me to leave, I leave.”
May you like
Clara looked at Chloe, at the counterfeit tablets in a sealed hospital bag, and at the photograph predicting tomorrow morning.
“You leave when we know what was supposed to happen at seven-thirty,” she said. “Until then, open your ledger.”
