Three Boys at the Door
Chapter 02 - Three Boys at the Door
Daniel blocked the doorway to Claire’s room as hospital security approached. He wanted to believe the boys were lying. Anger was easier than fear, and their troubled records gave him three convenient suspects.
“Start talking,” he said.
Ethan pulled a cracked phone from his pocket. The screen showed a shaky video recorded from inside an old pickup truck. Claire’s sedan was ahead of them on the river road. A black SUV appeared from behind, accelerated, and struck the rear side of her car. Claire spun toward the guardrail while the SUV continued into the darkness.
“We were following her,” Ethan admitted. “But only because she asked us to.”
For weeks, Claire had been investigating missing money from the Westbridge scholarship fund. Nearly two million dollars had vanished through fake student accounts. Ethan had found irregular files in the school network. Tyler had copied maintenance-camera records. Brandon had secretly photographed documents in his father’s home office.
Daniel stared at him. “Your father?”
Brandon’s face tightened. His father, Richard Hale, was chairman of the school board and the public face of the scholarship program.
“Mrs. Morgan said we needed proof before accusing anyone,” Brandon explained. “Tonight she texted us that she had the final ledger. Then she noticed the SUV behind her.”
The boys had reached Claire seconds after the crash. Brandon cut her seat belt. Tyler called emergency services. Ethan searched for the ledger, but Claire grabbed his wrist and forced the note into his hand. She wrote their names because they were the only people she trusted to finish what she had started.
“Then why did she say not to let you leave?” Daniel asked.
“Because we have the copies,” Ethan replied. “If we disappear, the truth disappears with us.”
A detective examined the phone, but the recording stopped before the SUV’s license plate became visible. The most important file had been remotely deleted minutes after the boys entered the hospital.
Suddenly, Tyler looked toward Claire’s room. The door was slowly closing.
Daniel rushed inside. A woman in blue scrubs stood beside Claire’s bed, reaching for the evidence bag on the table. Her badge was turned backward, and a syringe lay uncapped near Claire’s IV line.
The woman bolted through the opposite door. Security followed, but she vanished into a stairwell.
Dr. Wallace checked Claire and found no medication in the syringe. It had been a warning, not an attack.
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On the empty bed table, someone had left a message written in black ink:
GIVE US THE ORIGINAL LEDGER, OR SHE WILL NOT SURVIVE THE NIGHT.
