"The nurse from the footage." Julian continued. "I've never had anything on her. Get everything you can employment history, financials, communications, and anyone she's spoken to in the last six months. Everything."
"On it." Marcus closed the file. He said it the way people say things when they mean it completely without emphasis, without performance, the flat certainty of a person who does not need to announce their intentions because they simply fulfill them.
He walked out.
The door closed.
The office was quiet again.
Julian sat in his grandfather's chair behind his grandfather's desk in the office that had held four generations of Vale decisions, and he looked at the screen for another moment, and then he looked up.
Amara was watching him.
She had been watching him for the last twenty minutes with an expression he recognized not hope, exactly, not yet, but the precursor to it.
