Abigail up from school.
She ran toward him, then stopped to catch her breath.
He knelt and handed her inhaler over before panic reached her eyes.
Afterward, sitting in their old car, he told her he had been offered a temporary new job.
“Is it dangerous?” she asked.
Blake considered the question.
“Only if I stop paying attention.”
Abigail nodded with the seriousness of a child accustomed to adult worries.
“Then pay attention.”
The answer stayed with him.
He returned to the tower and asked Marcus for every record connected to the false contractor badge.
The badge had been programmed from Victor’s account, but the system also logged the terminal used to activate it.
The request came from an executive conference room on the 47th floor.
That room had no security camera, but its smart display automatically connected to nearby company phones during meetings.
Marcus found a device identifier linked to Nolan Price, Victor’s chief aide.
Nolan had been the man in the gray overcoat.
When investigators went to his apartment, he was gone.
His company phone had been wiped, and his passport was missing.
It looked like another dead end until Blake examined the garage service schedule.
Miguel had been assigned to Darlene’s car even though he normally maintained delivery vehicles.
The change had been approved by the garage manager, Thomas Venn.
Thomas denied remembering it.
Blake visited the garage during the night shift and found him packing tools into a cardboard box.
“Retiring?” Blake asked.
Thomas nearly dropped a wrench.
“Transferring.”
“The transfer form says you requested a position in another country.”
Thomas looked toward the ceiling camera.
“You should go back to cleaning offices.”
Blake placed Miguel’s photograph on the workbench.
“Did Victor’s people threaten him too?”
Thomas’s face collapsed.
He admitted that Nolan had ordered him to assign Miguel to Darlene’s vehicle.
After the crash, Nolan paid Thomas to alter the maintenance schedule and destroy a duplicate work order.
Thomas had kept a photograph of the original because he feared becoming the next person forced to disappear.
Miguel, he said, had not fled willingly.
He had called Thomas from a roadside motel two days after the crash, terrified that Victor’s security contractors were following him.
Thomas still had the number.
Marcus traced it to a prepaid phone that had recently connected to a tower outside a small town three hours away.
By dawn, Darlene’s outside investigators had located Miguel working under a shortened version of his name at a farm equipment repair shop.
He refused to return until they told him Blake had witnessed the garage scene.
Then he began to cry.
Miguel said Nolan had approached him with photographs of his undocumented younger brother and threatened to have him detained.
The assignment, Nolan claimed, was only to create a mechanical problem that would frighten Darlene into taking medical leave.
Miguel pinched the brake line and made a shallow cut.
He believed a dashboard warning would appear before the car reached the highway.
When the crash nearly killed her, he understood he had been used.
Nolan paid him cash and ordered him to leave Oakridge.
Miguel saved the voicemail because it was the only protection he had.
The next afternoon, the emergency board meeting began on the 50th floor.
Victor arrived early, wearing the navy suit
