Harbor Union Calls Again

Nora called Brooke at 6:12 in the morning from the laundry room, the only place where Sophie would not hear panic before breakfast.

"Kind Harbor wants me in," Nora said.

Brooke's voice sharpened out of sleep. "For work?"

"For old billing assignments in my access logs."

"Did you access any files outside your duties?"

"I work billing. Everyone's file is outside someone's duty if management needs it to be."

Brooke sat up in her apartment, already reaching for a pen. Nora's anger sounded steadier this morning. That made it more useful and more dangerous.

"Who called?"

"Evan Rusk."

Brooke wrote the name. "Do not bring him anything."

Nora's silence answered too much.

"Mrs. Vale."

"Do you have Judith's name on Lila's form?" Nora asked.

Brooke stopped writing.

Outside Nora's laundry room, Sophie coughed and called for cereal.

"Where did you get that?" Brooke asked.

"From your face yesterday."

"You did not see my face yesterday when I found it."

"Then from the fact that you didn't ask who Judith was when I said Miles's mother came over."

Brooke closed her eyes. Smart witnesses were often liabilities because they believed intelligence was armor.

"Do not go to Kind Harbor alone."

"Are you offering to come?"

"I am telling you not to go."

"That is not the same thing."

Nora ended the call first.

At Kind Harbor, Evan Rusk waited in the glass lobby with two coffees and the concerned smile of a man photographed often with donors. He kissed Nora's cheek without permission.

"You poor thing," he said loudly enough for reception to hear. "Let's get you protected."

Nora looked past him to the hallway where the records room door stood open.

On the cart outside it sat a shred bin packed with blue Kind Harbor assignment forms.

One of them had Miles's handwriting on the corner.