Chapter 11 - Lily Wakes Up
The rhythmic hum of the ICU monitor was the only sound in the dim room.
Lily lay propped up at a thirty-degree angle. Her face was swollen to nearly twice its normal size, mapped with dark purple and yellow contusions that ran from her cheekbone down beneath the thick gauze collar supporting her neck.
Her right hand twitched against the cotton sheet.
I pulled the bedside chair close, laid my pistol on the side table out of her view, and gently touched her uninjured knuckles.
"Lily," I whispered.
Her eyelids fluttered. Slowly, painfully, her left eye blinked open. It was clouded with morphine and exhaustion, but the instant she saw my face, the fog cleared. A tiny shudder ran through her shoulders.
"Shh," I said, leaning down so my forehead rested against her forearm. "Don't try to move. You're at Mercy General. You're safe. The surgery is over."
A muffled, agonized sound came from behind the wire mesh locking her teeth together. A single tear tracked down her temple, soaking into the white bandages.
She pulled her hand from beneath mine, her fingers trembling with effort, and pointed toward the small bedside table where the nurse had left a spiral notepad and a ballpoint pen.
I picked them up and placed the pen into her shaking fingers.
Lily pressed the pen to the paper. Her handwriting was jagged, erratic, reflecting the heavy dose of painkillers circulating through her veins, but every letter was deliberate.
JULIAN, she wrote.
She paused, taking a ragged, rattling breath through her nose, and then underlined the name twice.
Below it, she pressed harder, indenting the cardboard backing:
HE TOOK THE PHONE.
HE SAID MY DAD COULDN'T SAVE ME.
THEY HAVE THE GIRLS ON TAPE.
I gripped the edge of the mattress, feeling a cold fire burn behind my ribs.
"I have the tape, Lily," I told her, keeping my voice gentle, reassuring, completely devoid of the violence I had just carried through the halls. "I found Marcus. He’s safe. And I have the files from Julian’s safe."
Lily looked at me, her brown eye wide and searching. She wrote one more line, her hand shaking so badly the pen tore through the paper:
ARTHUR IS BURNING IT TONIGHT.
"Burning what?" I asked.
She tapped the pen against the word TONIGHT, then scribbled two words below it:
MAIN HOUSE.
I understood instantly. Arthur Vance wasn't just celebrating his political campaign tonight. He was holding the gala as a public alibi while his security team cleaned house. Whatever original physical servers held the unedited city camera logs and the fraternity's blackmail files were inside that estate, waiting to be wiped clean the moment the last donor went home.
I stood up, took the pen from her hand, and smoothed her hair back from her forehead.
"You did your job, reporter," I whispered, kissing her forehead above the bandages. "You broke the story. Now let your old man handle the redactions."
She closed her eye, her breathing settling into a calm, steady rhythm.
May you like
I walked out of the room, handed the charge nurse five hundred dollars in cash from Julian's safe for "coffee and round-the-clock private vigilance," and called Sarah Jenkins.
"Sarah," I said into the burner. "Get Marcus and the transmission rig. We're going to crash a black-tie party."
