CHAPTER 3 – The Files That Shouldn’t Exist
The interior of the car smelled like clean leather and something faintly metallic beneath it.
Blood, Delilah realized.
Lincoln Frost did not sit like a man recovering from an injury. He sat like a man who had learned to ignore pain until it became background noise.
The car pulled away from the curb.
Delilah kept her hands in her lap. “Start talking.”
Lincoln reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a thin black folder. He didn’t hand it to her immediately.
“You reported a medication discrepancy,” he said. “Pike administered a drug combination that should have triggered cardiac arrest within minutes. The patient didn’t die immediately.”
Delilah’s jaw tightened. “He suffered for eleven hours.”
“Yes,” Lincoln said simply.
Her nails dug into her palm.
“And then the record changed,” she said. “The dosage was altered after the fact. The monitors were… adjusted. I know.”
“No,” Lincoln corrected. “You know what you were allowed to see.”
He opened the folder and finally handed it to her.
Inside were scanned hospital records. But not the ones she remembered.
These showed discrepancies in staffing logs. Access timestamps. Security footage overlays.
Delilah’s breath slowed as she read.
“This… this isn’t possible,” she whispered.
“It is,” Lincoln said. “If you own the system recording it.”
She looked up sharply.
“You mean… the hospital?”
“I mean the network,” he replied.
Delilah flipped another page.
Her own signature appeared on reports she had never signed.
Her stomach dropped.
“No,” she said again, softer now. “That’s forged.”
“Yes.”
Her voice cracked slightly. “Then why am I the one who got fired?”
Lincoln leaned forward slightly. “Because Pike doesn’t just manipulate medicine. He manipulates accountability. And you were the variable that didn’t behave correctly.”
The car turned onto a private road. Trees closed in on both sides.
Delilah felt the weight of everything she had lost pressing against her ribs.
“My life is gone,” she said quietly.
“It was redirected,” Lincoln corrected.
She laughed bitterly. “That’s a generous way to say destroyed.”
Lincoln looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said something she didn’t expect.
“I didn’t bring you here to recruit you.”
“Then why?”
“Because Pike made a mistake.”
Delilah frowned. “He destroyed evidence. He framed me. That’s not a mistake.”
“No,” Lincoln said. “The mistake was assuming you wouldn’t survive it.”
The car slowed.
A large estate came into view—glass, stone, security lights hidden behind landscaping.
Delilah stared at it.
“This is yours?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m supposed to trust you because… you got stabbed in an alley and offered me a ride?”
“I didn’t get stabbed,” Lincoln corrected calmly. “I was warned.”
Delilah turned sharply. “Warned?”
Lincoln’s gaze darkened slightly.
“Pike knows I’ve been investigating him for two years.”
Silence filled the car.
Then Delilah said, very slowly, “Investigating him for what?”
Lincoln looked out the window.
“For killing patients who weren’t supposed to die.”
The car stopped.
And for the first time since the alley, Delilah felt something shift.
May you like
Not fear.
Alignment.
