Chapter 3 - A MARRIAGE BUILT ON MISSING HOURS
The bullet struck the locker and filled the narrow corridor with the violent clang of metal.
Claire dropped to the floor.
Adrian grabbed Vivian by the arm and pulled her behind a concrete support pillar.
“Stay down.”
The gunman moved toward them with controlled steps.
He was no longer wearing hospital scrubs. A dark cap concealed most of his face, but Vivian recognized his height and the rigid way he carried his left shoulder.
Adrian seized a luggage cart and shoved it hard across the tiled floor.
It crashed into the gunman’s legs.
The weapon discharged again, the shot disappearing into the ceiling.
Claire crawled toward a red emergency lever and pulled it.
A siren erupted through the station.
The gunman kicked the cart aside, but travelers were already shouting. Transit police appeared at the end of the concourse.
He ran through a service door.
Adrian started after him.
Vivian grabbed his jacket.
“No.”
“He’ll escape.”
“And you’ll get killed.”
For one charged second, they faced each other.
Adrian stopped.
Police secured the area and questioned them separately. Vivian handed over the damaged locker but concealed the memory card inside her glove. She did not enjoy lying to investigators, yet until she knew who Voss controlled, she would not surrender the only evidence her father had died protecting.
The gunman disappeared into an underground delivery tunnel.
Security footage showed only a partial profile.
After the interviews, Vivian insisted Claire receive treatment at a hospital outside the Voss network. Adrian arranged transportation to Northwestern Memorial under an alias.
Vivian went with him.
They sat in silence in the back seat of a rideshare car while Claire rested in another vehicle ahead of them.
Adrian’s cheek still carried the faint mark of Vivian’s hand.
She felt no satisfaction when she looked at it.
“Who was the gunman?” she asked.
“I don’t know his real name. Voss calls him Mercer.”
“What does he do?”
“Problems disappear when Mercer gets involved.”
“People?”
Adrian looked out the window.
“Sometimes.”
Vivian swallowed.
“Did you know he killed my father?”
“No. I believed Voss arranged the sabotage, but I couldn’t prove Mercer was involved.”
“You could have warned me.”
“I wanted to.”
“You had seven years.”
“I know.”
The city passed outside in streaks of light.
Vivian remembered countless evenings waiting for Adrian to return home. She had thought his absence meant work mattered more than she did. Now she understood that some of those missing hours had been spent helping Claire, tracking Voss, and perhaps trying to repair a crime he had enabled through silence.
The new explanation did not erase the pain.
It complicated it.
At the hospital, Claire was admitted under guard arranged by a federal contact Adrian claimed he trusted. Vivian refused to accept his judgment alone. She called an investigative reporter named Natalie Brooks, whose name appeared in Claire’s phone.
Natalie arrived before dawn.
She was forty, sharp-eyed, and dressed in jeans beneath a long camel coat. She listened without interruption as Vivian described the locker, the shooting, and the memory card.
When Vivian finished, Natalie said, “I need to tell you something you won’t like.”
“I’m getting used to that.”
“Your father contacted my editor shortly before his death. He claimed Voss was conducting illegal genetic surveillance.”
“Why didn’t the paper publish it?”
“Leonard canceled the meeting. The next day, he was dead. Without documents, the story disappeared.”
Vivian placed the memory card on the table.
“Can you open this safely?”
Natalie studied it.
“Not on any device connected to the internet.”
Adrian had access to a secure laboratory computer at Cole Biotechnics. Vivian almost refused to go there, but Natalie convinced her that the company’s isolated testing network was their best option.
At six in the morning, the four of them entered Cole Biotechnics through an underground loading entrance.
Vivian had attended holiday parties in the building but had never seen the restricted research levels below the lobby.
Adrian led them to a windowless room containing a single computer disconnected from the company network.
Claire inserted the memory card.
A password screen appeared.
“Your father was fond of personal passwords,” Adrian said.
Vivian tried her birthday.
Denied.
Her mother’s name.
Denied.
The name of their childhood dog.
Denied.
Then she remembered the photograph from the lunchbox.
“The day he said I became brave.”
“What day was that?” Claire asked.
Vivian thought back.
At twelve, she had fallen through thin ice during a school outing near Wisconsin. Her father pulled her out. Later, he told everyone Vivian had remained calm and guided another child to safety.
The date had been January 18.
She entered 0118LAKE.
The files opened.
Hundreds of folders filled the screen.
Clinical reports.
Payment ledgers.
Audio recordings.
Internal messages bearing Voss’s name.
Natalie leaned forward.
“This could be enough.”
Claire opened a file labeled DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENTS.
It contained contracts between Voss Clinical Research and several companies. Most names were disguised through shell corporations, but the transactions were unmistakable.
Patients’ genetic profiles had been sold.
One corporation used neurological-risk data when making executive hiring decisions. An insurer adjusted premiums based on undisclosed test results. A private security company built psychological profiles of political candidates.
Vivian felt sick.
“These people never consented?”
“No,” Claire said.
Adrian opened an audio file.
Vivian’s father’s voice filled the room.
“I am formally objecting to all external use of Harbor data. Malcolm, you cannot sell medical predictions as though they are consumer lists.”
Voss answered with calm amusement.
“You are confusing morality with ownership, Leonard. The contracts belong to the laboratory.”
“The blood belongs to human beings.”
“The blood was discarded. The information was discovered.”
“Then I will take this to the Department of Justice.”
A chair scraped.
Voss’s voice lowered.
“You have a daughter, don’t you?”
The recording ended.
Vivian closed her eyes.
She had almost forgotten the warm steadiness of her father’s voice. Hearing it reduced fourteen years to a single breath.
Adrian moved toward her, then stopped before touching her.
She noticed.
A second recording contained Adrian’s voice.
He sounded young and frightened.
“Dr. Voss, I deleted the external backup like you asked.”
Vivian turned toward him.
Adrian went pale.
The recording continued.
“I don’t want any part of this.”
Voss replied, “You already have a part. Your only decision is whether it becomes a profitable one.”
Natalie paused the audio.
Adrian did not defend himself.
Vivian looked at him.
“You deleted my father’s backup?”
“Yes.”
“Before or after he died?”
“Before.”
“And afterward, you accepted Voss’s investment.”
“Yes.”
Every answer was quiet.
No excuses.
No denial.
Vivian turned away.
Adrian spoke behind her.
“I was twenty-three. My mother had cancer. Voss was paying for her treatment and threatening to stop. I told myself the data would survive somewhere else. When Leonard died, I understood what my cowardice had helped him do.”
Vivian faced him again.
“So you married me out of guilt?”
“No.”
“Did you approach me because of my father?”
Adrian hesitated.
That hesitation was enough.
“At first, yes.”
Claire looked down.
Natalie remained silent.
Vivian’s voice trembled despite her effort to control it.
“You met me at Malcolm’s gala because he sent you.”
“He wanted to know whether your father had left you anything.”
“And you accepted?”
“I intended to speak to you once. Then we talked.”
“How romantic.”
“I fell in love with you before I understood what was happening.”
“You understood perfectly. You simply decided your feelings mattered more than my right to know.”
Adrian’s face tightened.
“That is true.”
His willingness to admit it made her angrier.
Vivian picked up the divorce envelope from her bag.
“I should have made you sign this in the hospital.”
“Maybe you should.”
She looked at him sharply.
He continued.
“I love you, but love doesn’t entitle me to forgiveness. It doesn’t erase what I did.”
For the first time since Room 614, Adrian was not asking her to stay.
That hurt in a different way.
An alarm flashed on the computer.
Claire leaned over the keyboard.
“Someone activated the building network remotely.”
“That computer is isolated,” Adrian said.
“Not anymore.”
Files began disappearing from the screen.
Natalie pulled out an external storage device.
“Copy everything.”
Claire started the transfer.
The progress bar moved slowly.
Ten percent.
Twenty-two.
Adrian checked the security cameras.
Every feed displayed an empty hallway.
“That’s impossible.”
The laboratory lights shut off.
Emergency lighting turned the room red.
Vivian heard the electronic lock engage.
They were trapped.
Claire continued copying.
Forty-one percent.
Smoke began seeping beneath the door.
Natalie covered her mouth.
“Fire?”
Adrian touched the wall.
“No heat. It’s a chemical suppressant.”
“Is it toxic?”
“In this concentration, it can displace oxygen.”
The building system announced an evacuation, but their door remained locked.
Fifty-six percent.
Adrian pulled a maintenance panel from the wall.
Vivian helped him tear out wiring.
“Can you open it?”
“Maybe.”
Claire coughed.
Seventy-four percent.
Vivian wrapped her scarf across Claire’s mouth.
Adrian crossed two wires.
Sparks flashed.
Nothing happened.
Eighty-nine percent.
The room filled with dense white vapor.
Vivian’s lungs burned.
The transfer reached one hundred percent.
Natalie removed the drive.
At that moment, Adrian forced the lock mechanism, and the door released.
They stumbled into the corridor.
A figure appeared at the far end behind the smoke.
Malcolm Voss walked toward them wearing a respirator.
He stopped several yards away.
Even through the mask, Vivian recognized his silver hair and confident posture.
He looked directly at her.
Then he pressed a control in his hand.
The fire doors slammed between them.
By the time emergency crews reached the laboratory, Voss was gone.
The computer had been destroyed.
But Natalie still held the copied files.
Outside the building, as firefighters moved around them, Vivian received another message from the unknown number.
You have forty-eight hours to return what your father stole.
May you like
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Attached was a photograph of Vivian’s mother leaving her home that morning.
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