“Which is exactly how early you always are.”
“I’ve been told it’s a problem.”
She stepped aside to let him in.
Her dining table was covered in paper — purchase orders from the facilities office, a supply grid she’d been building for two weeks, the yellow marker uncapped beside an open notebook.The pen behind her ear had migrated to her hair.
“Productive day?”he asked.
She pulled the pen from behind her ear, looked at it as if she didn’t know how it had gotten there, and set it on the counter.“I found the purchase orders for the ambulance bay renovation.Filed in the facilities office.Maria covered my patients while I pulled them.”
“What did they show?”
“The renovation was funded by a restricted grant from the Montgomery Family Foundation.The contractor was Coastal Infrastructure Partners.Same name that’s on the ambulance transport contracts.”
Graham sat down and looked at the grid.“Coastal funded the renovation and runs the transport.They built the bay and they control what comes through it.”
“That’s what the paper trail says.”
He picked up one of the purchase orders.Cream paper, navy ink, the Montgomery Family Foundation logo discreet in the upper left.He set it back down.
“The safety drill is Monday.I spent the afternoon at Ronan’s going through the plan.Camera footage from the basement, sealed transfer orders from the physicians’ portal, Mitch on the perimeter.If everything goes right, we hand a complete package to the U.S.Attorney by Tuesday.”
Maren sat down across from him.She set the highlighter parallel to the edge of the table, square with the supply grid, and looked at him.
“Janet Creighton was in the parking lot when I left tonight.”
Graham looked up.
“She doesn’t work days.She hasn’t been on the day schedule in three years.But her car was in the staff lot at six forty-five, parked in the row closest to the ambulance bay.Engine off, lights off.I walked past it on the way to my car.”
“Was she inside?”
“I didn’t stop to check.I kept walking, got in my car, and drove home the way I always do.”She kept her hands flat on the table.“She wasn’t there for a shift.She wasn’t there for a meeting.I checked the internal calendar before I left — nothing scheduled after five.”
“You think she was watching you.”
“I think she was watching the building.Whether that includes me, I don’t know.But a night supervisor sitting in a dark car next to the ambulance bay during the day shift isn’t routine.It’s reconnaissance.”
She had used his word, and she had used it correctly.
“She knows about the safety drill,” Graham said.
“Everyone knows about the safety drill.It’s on the internal calendar, the break room bulletin board, and the daily huddle notes.Mason Thompson briefed the ER staff yesterday.”
“Which means Montgomery knows.”
“Which means Creighton is doing exactly what we’re doing.Looking at the building and thinking about what forty minutes of chaos makes possible.”
“I’ll call Mitch tonight,” Graham said.“He can extend the perimeter to cover the ambulance bay entrance from oh-seven-hundred forward.”
“Good.”Maren looked at the highlighter.Looked at him.“What else?”
“What else what?”
“You have the look you get when there’s something you haven’t said yet.The one where you go still for half a second before you answer.”
He thought about Ronan’s last sentence at the door.