Chapter 8 — The Price of Testimony

Three days later, Dominic could lift his right knee. His left foot remained stubbornly still.

Ward's team began rehabilitation in small, exhausting increments. Claire visited after her agency shifts, but she did not join his treatment team. When Dominic asked her to review every note before his physical therapist came in, she refused.

"You have doctors who can answer medical questions," she said. "You can ask me what their explanations mean. You can't make me the only person you trust."

"I wasn't trying to."

"You fired two therapists yesterday."

"The first called me inspiring. The second moved my leg without asking."

"Then you had one good reason. Tell the department which one it was."

He gave her a look she had begun to recognize: irritation followed by reluctant amusement. She stayed until the next therapist arrived, then let them work without her.

Rebecca brought news from the investigators that afternoon. Kessler had offered to explain the unlisted device and testify against Elias. His lawyer wanted an agreement limiting the use of his statements. He also claimed that Elias had approved every payment and dictated the clinic's altered records.

"Does the evidence support that?" Claire asked.

"Some of it. Kessler still signed the operative note and billed for the procedure. His story makes him sound like an employee who couldn't say no."

Claire thought of the doctor leaning over Dominic with an unrecorded syringe. "He had choices."

"We can establish those choices without relying on what he says about himself," Rebecca replied.

They examined the business records Dominic had released. An investigator had identified a payment from a freight subcontractor to Briar Clinical Partners. It was described as "mobility consultation." Elias had approved it, but Kessler's clinic submitted the invoice and received the money. A second invoice, dated after Dominic's fever began, charged for "extended monitoring" while no follow-up appointment appeared in the clinic calendar.

Claire recognized the pattern from St. Alden: vague descriptions, complete paperwork, missing patient encounters. She asked Rebecca for permission to share a list of questions with the detective rather than dig through records she had no right to access.

"Ask for the clinic's inventory log," she said. "The original one. Ask who entered the device code, who checked it out, and whether a patient was billed for it. Also ask why the operative note changed twice after the hospital requested it."

Rebecca wrote down each question. "Those are useful. What about the second invoice?"

"It may show Kessler knew Dominic was getting worse and kept billing instead of bringing him back. Let the investigators verify the dates."

Leah called that evening with news Claire had not expected. The St. Alden records clerk, Margaret Sloane, had found the old contract file. Briar had been paid to review surgical "utilization." Kessler's name appeared on the approval sheets for procedures Claire had questioned years earlier.

Claire went to the apartment she had barely seen since the first night shift. The old appeal boxes still stood beside her kitchen table. She found the index she had made during the disciplinary case and matched Briar's invoices to three patients whose surgeries she had questioned. None of the invoices described a patient. Each had been approved after the corresponding operation, when St. Alden was preparing its billing submission.

She wrote the dates on a clean sheet for Margaret and Ava. Then she crossed out her first angry heading,

The People Who Ruined Me

, and replaced it with the patients' case numbers. She needed the records to speak for themselves. Her anger could wait until she knew who had changed what.

"She kept the copies legally as part of the appeal file," Leah said. "She won't send them to me. She wants to speak to you and your attorney."

Claire had no attorney for the old case anymore. She had exhausted her savings fighting the first disciplinary action. Rebecca offered to introduce her to someone independent.

"I work for Dominic," she said. "That distinction matters if the cases overlap."

Claire appreciated it. The person who could help reopen her case needed to be hers, not a favor from a man whose own records were under investigation.

Dominic heard about Margaret when Claire returned the next day. "I'll pay for counsel."

"You can offer. I can decline."

"You'll need someone good."

"So will you," she said. "Rebecca can protect your interests. She can't tell your story for you."

Dominic looked out at the rehabilitation garden, where a groundskeeper was sweeping leaves from a path he could not yet walk. "I used to think paying the best lawyer meant deciding what the truth would sound like."

"What do you think now?"

"I think the truth is going to sound worse than I want."

"Rebecca found one. I'll handle the fee."

He started to protest, then saw her face. "All right."

"That sounded painful."

"It was."

The conversation might have ended gently if Rebecca had not arrived with a new packet from the investigators. Kessler's clinic had turned over its original payment instructions. The money for the device came through Elias's subcontractor account. The instruction to remove a separate freight account from review, however, bore Dominic's own electronic approval from five years earlier.

Dominic read the page twice. He remembered it. He had authorized a transfer to conceal payments to men who threatened drivers who tried to leave a route.

"Elias can point to this," Rebecca said. "He'll argue you taught him how the company operated."

"He wouldn't be wrong."

Claire stood at the foot of the bed. She had refused to turn Dominic into a hero for surviving a crime. Now she saw whether he had understood her.

"The accounts you gave Rebecca," she said. "Are they complete?"

Dominic held the page by its edges. "No. There's an archive my father kept. I left out the years before I took control."

Rebecca put the packet down. "We can preserve the archive now. If someone else finds it first, they'll reasonably ask what else you concealed."

"There's nothing else," he said, then caught himself. "Nothing else I remember. I want to review it with you."

"Because they implicated your father?"

"Because they implicated me."

He looked at Rebecca. "I know where it is."