Chapter 3: The Harbor Fire

I could have told Nora I did not remember the report.

That would have been true. It would also have sounded like every excuse a powerful man makes when a signature comes back to him.

“I signed it,” I said.

She looked down at the blanket over her knees. “You know which paper I mean.”

“I remember the settlement. I was told the fire started in faulty wiring.”

“Who told you?”

“My legal team. The project manager. Gideon.”

Nora gave a small, exhausted laugh. “You’re the owner, Roman. You got to decide when to stop asking questions.”

Peter returned before I could answer. He told Nora the hospital wanted to monitor her overnight. Her tests supported exposure to a sedating drug, though they could not yet establish precisely what had been used. A nurse had photographed the puncture mark. Peter had also urged me to give the police the names of everyone who had entered Nora’s apartment.

I told him to do it.

Nora turned toward me. “Caleb will disappear.”

“He might. That’s still the right call.”

Peter left to speak with the hospital staff. Maisie slept through it, one hand resting on the rabbit’s repaired ear.

Nora watched her daughter for a moment. “Evan worked nights at Pier Nine. He inspected the fire doors and kept copies of his reports because the repairs never seemed to get done. The week he died, he called me twice. He said somebody was moving hazardous material through a warehouse that wasn’t approved for it.”

“What material?”

“He didn’t know. He was trying to find out.”

On the night of the fire, Evan had gone back to the warehouse after his shift. He had told Nora he was meeting someone who could show him the shipping records. Before dawn, she received a call saying he had been found inside.

“The official report said he entered after the fire began,” she said. “That he ignored an evacuation order.”

“Did he?”

“He left me a voicemail at 10:18. He was already inside, waiting for the person he was supposed to meet. The fire wasn’t reported until later.”

“Did the investigators hear it?”

“I gave them a copy. It never appeared in the case file.”

She reached for her water, and I passed it to her. She took a sip before continuing.

“For years, I thought the person Evan was meeting had set him up. Then a former bookkeeper from the harbor project contacted me. She had found payments made just before and after the fire. She was scared and wouldn’t send me everything at once.”

“The flash drive?”

“Some of it.”

“Where is the bookkeeper?”

“I don’t know. She stopped answering three days ago.”

Three days ago, Gideon had sat across from me downtown and denied that money was missing from the same project.

Nora saw the calculation on my face. “That’s why I brought the drive to work. I was going to copy one folder and leave. Caleb came to my apartment before I could.”

“You hid it in Maisie’s rabbit.”

“I hid it there weeks ago. She carries Bunny everywhere, even when I tell her to leave him home.” Nora’s voice caught. “I never imagined anyone would go looking for him.”

I looked at the sleeping child. Caleb had known about the rabbit. He could have learned it from watching Maisie around the house. He could also have learned it from someone Nora trusted.

“Let me see the files,” I said.

Nora did not hand over the drive immediately. “If your signature is there, will you still help us?”

“I don’t know what my signature is on.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

I held her gaze. “Yes.”

She reached under her pillow. The drive had been there while we spoke.

Peter arranged for us to use a hospital computer that was disconnected from its network. I did not call anyone from my company. Nora watched while I opened the folders.

The first held scanned contracts and invoices. I recognized our harbor redevelopment letterhead, but several vendor names meant nothing to me. Payments had moved through subcontractors into accounts identified only by numbers. The bookkeeper had annotated two entries: one paid the day before Evan died, another approved the morning after.

The second folder contained photographs of Pier Nine. A fire door chained open. A stack of containers blocking an exit. Evan’s handwritten inspection forms appeared beside them, each dated and signed.

I opened a scanned report bearing my own signature. I remembered the meeting when I signed it: rain against the boardroom windows, Gideon impatient to get the settlement resolved, my lawyer saying the investigators had found no evidence of criminal conduct.

Nora leaned forward. “Look at page four.”

Page four was a directive to postpone repairs to the warehouse alarm system. At the bottom sat my name, typed under an approval line.

“That’s not my signature,” I said.

“It doesn’t have one. Your office supposedly sent it electronically.”

“The approval code is mine.” I looked closer. “But I was in Boston on that date. I can check when it was entered and who had access.”

Nora’s expression did not soften. “Can you prove you didn’t authorize it from Boston?”

“Maybe.”

“Then find out.”

She was giving me work to do, not forgiveness. I deserved the distinction.

In the last folder we found a short audio file. It began with a chair scraping and two men speaking too far from the microphone to identify. One voice mentioned the inspector’s visit scheduled for the next morning. The other answered clearly enough for both of us to hear.

“It has to burn before he gets there.”

The recording ended. No names. No confession of who had started the fire.

Nora gripped the edge of the desk. “Evan was in that building.”

I copied nothing and closed the file. “Who made the recording?”

“The bookkeeper didn’t say.”

“Then we find her. And we find the original approval records.”

A knock came at the room door. Peter entered with a uniformed officer and paused when he saw the screen.

“There’s a detective downstairs,” he said. “Security at the estate reported the shooting.”

Nora rose too quickly and caught the desk to steady herself.

“I’ll speak to the detective,” I said. “You don’t have to answer questions tonight.”

“Yes, I do.” She picked up the drive. “Caleb came for this because he thought I’d be too frightened to use it. I’m done helping him be right.”

She walked toward the door. I followed, leaving the computer dark behind us.

Just outside the room, Peter stopped me. “Roman. The detective spoke with your security company before coming up. Caleb told them Nora attacked him and stole confidential project files.”

Nora heard him. For the first time since waking, she smiled.

“Good,” she said. “Then he’s admitted the files are real.”