Chapter 7 - THE VANCE FILE
My father died when I was nine.
Construction accident.
That was what I had always believed.
His name was Michael Vance.
Union electrician.
South Boston.
Except Michael Vance wasn't his original name.
He had once been Michael Varano.
A chemist employed by Helix Meridian's predecessor.
My father had helped design the earliest version of Victoria's research network.
Then discovered patient data was being collected without meaningful consent.
He tried to expose it.
Three weeks later, he died.
My mother changed nothing because she didn't know.
But Victoria kept track of his children.
Me.
Eli.
Our medical histories.
Our education.
Everything.
I hadn't accidentally become a toxicologist.
At least, Victoria didn't think so.
She had anonymously funded a scholarship I received at nineteen.
She had nudged me toward the field.
I felt violated.
Even my accomplishments suddenly seemed contaminated.
Julian found me sitting on the hospital roof.
“You earned your degree.”
“You don't know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“She paid for part of it.”
“You studied.”
“She created opportunities.”
“You took them.”
I looked at him.
“Doesn't it bother you that someone can move pieces around your life without you knowing?”
He laughed once.
“Maya, have you met my family?”
Fair.
He sat beside me.
“Someone opening a door doesn't mean they walked through it for you.”
I started crying.
I hated crying.
Julian pretended not to notice until I leaned against him.
Then he wrapped his coat around my shoulders.
“Why me?” I whispered.
“Your father had something Victoria wanted.”
“What?”
“A failsafe.”
Michael Vance had encrypted the original patient registry.
Victoria had spent twenty years trying to recover it.
She believed the key was hidden in something left to his children.
My mother had kept one box of Dad's belongings.
Eli and I searched it.
Photographs.
Tools.
Letters.
An old cassette recorder.
And a children's bedtime tape.
Dad's voice.
I nearly broke hearing it.
At the end, after a story about a lighthouse, he said:
“If you're old enough to understand why I'm gone, remember this: people aren't data.”
Then a sequence of musical notes played.
Not a password.
Part of one.
The rest was hidden in a second recording.
Where?
Eli remembered.
“Mom donated Dad's tapes after he died.”
“To where?”
“The hospital library.”
My old hospital.
The same place that had suspended me.
We went back.
The administrator who had buried my whistleblower complaint tried to block me.
This time I had federal investigators beside me.
Funny how policies change.
The archive contained the tape.
We recovered the key.
The registry held evidence on more than forty thousand patients.
Enough to destroy Helix Meridian.
Enough to expose Victoria.
But when we tried to upload it, the system required a second authorization.
Victoria's.
She had designed it that way.
To release the evidence, we needed her alive.
And willing.
Or physically present.
Julian looked at me.
“So we bring her back.”
“How?”
He smiled.
For the first time, I understood why entire criminal organizations feared Julian Sterling.
“We offer her the one thing she can't resist.”
“What?”
May you like
“Winning.”
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