Chapter 6: What Daniel Knows
921 Words
I held his gaze and said nothing.
That was the only move. Say something and I'd give him something to measure it against. Stay quiet and he'd have to keep going on his own.
Daniel looked at me for a long moment. Then back at the figure on the bed.
"You don't find it strange," he said slowly. "Standing in a room like this. Looking at someone like that."
"It's my job."
"Most people find it unsettling. Being this close to someone between life and death."
"I'm used to it."
He nodded, but not like he believed me. Like he was filing the answer away next to something else and checking how they fit together.
He walked to the window. Outside, the estate grounds had gone dark, just the lights along the path and the old trees and beyond them the east wing sitting quiet and separate like it always had.
"How long have you worked at the hospital?" he asked.
"Long enough."
"Elena said you were good at your job."
"Elena was kind."
"Elena," Daniel said carefully, "is never kind without a reason."
I looked at the monitors. "Is there something you need, Mr. Hayes. Or are you checking on the patient."
He turned from the window. "Both."
He came back to the bedside and stood across from me with the unconscious body of Adrian Cole between us, and studied my face in the way people study things that bother them without knowing why.
"You remind me of someone," he said.
My pulse moved but I kept my face still. "I get that sometimes."
"I'm sure you do." He looked down at the bed. "He was my best friend. Did you know that? Fifteen years." He said it simply, without the weight people usually put on confessions. "We built things together. Fought about everything. He never backed down from anything in his life."
He paused.
"That made him dangerous to the wrong people."
I watched him carefully. "And the right ones?"
Daniel almost smiled. "The right ones loved him for it."
The room was quiet except for the machines. Outside a door opened and closed somewhere deep in the house.
"What happened to him," I said. Not a question. A direction.
Daniel looked at me sharply.
"At the gala," I said. "The news said he collapsed. But that's not what happened is it."
The air in the room shifted. Daniel's expression didn't change exactly — it just stopped moving.
"You ask a lot of questions," he said quietly.
"Occupational habit."
He was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I thought he was going to walk out. Then he said, "Have you ever done something you couldn't take back. Not because you wanted to. Because you thought it was the only way to protect something bigger than yourself."
I looked at him.
He was looking at the bed.
"I think about that night every hour," he said. "I think about whether I'd make the same choice again and the answer is different every time I ask it." He exhaled slowly. "That probably doesn't mean anything to you."
"It means more than you think."
He looked at me again. That same searching look. Closer this time.
"Who are you," he said softly. Not aggressive. Almost wondering.
Before I could answer, the door opened.
Angela walked in without knocking, tablet in hand, and stopped when she saw us both standing there.
Her eyes moved between me and Daniel the way eyes move when they're calculating something quickly.
"Daniel." Her voice was even. "I didn't know you were here."
"Just checking in."
"Mm." She looked at me. "Hourly check is overdue."
I moved to the monitors without being asked and ran through the readings, keeping my back to them, ears open.
Angela's voice dropped but not enough. "You're spending time with the staff now."
"I was checking on him."
"You were talking." A pause. "About what."
"Nothing important."
Silence. The kind that meant she didn't believe him.
"The east wing meeting is in an hour," she said. "Don't be late."
Her footsteps moved toward the door. Then stopped.
"And Daniel." Her voice was quieter now. Almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. "Remember what we agreed. Sentiment is a luxury we can't afford right now."
The door closed behind her.
Daniel stood still for a moment. Then he straightened his jacket, looked at the bed one last time, and moved toward the door.
He stopped beside me on his way out.
"Keep a close eye on him tonight," he said quietly. "Not because it's your job."
He left before I could ask what that meant.
I stood alone in the room with the machines and my own unconscious body and Angela's words still sitting in the air.
The east wing meeting.
I looked toward the window. Toward the old dark building sitting separate from the rest of the estate, the rusted gate, the rooms my father had told me held nothing worth seeing.
Whatever they were protecting — whatever was worth shooting a man over, worth the syringe, worth flying private security into a hospital — it wasn't in this room.
It was over there.
And in one hour, they were all going to be in the same place at the same time, behind closed doors, talking about something they'd killed to keep hidden.
I checked the monitors, set the alert on the secondary screen, and looked at the door.
One hour.
I needed to be in that wing before they were
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