Chapter 2 - The Ring Ava Never Took Off
Daniel refused to leave the surgical floor.
Dr. Reed threatened security.
Eleanor stopped him.
“If you’re wrong about that patient, tearing off the sheet won’t give you the truth. It’ll just make you the man who violated an unconscious woman.”
Daniel hated that she was right.
He stood behind the glass instead.
The patient remained sedated.
Vanessa was taken to a private consultation room.
Daniel sat across from her.
“Start talking.”
Vanessa wiped tears from her face.
“I can’t tell you who she is.”
“You told me my wife was dead.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because Ava told me to.”
Daniel went still.
“When?”
“Eight months ago.”
Ava had already been missing three months by then.
Vanessa said Ava called from an unknown number.
Her voice was weak.
She instructed Vanessa to tell Daniel that she had died if he came too close to finding a certain medical file.
“What file?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“I never saw it.”
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“Then why obey her?”
“Because she said if you found her before she finished what she started, someone else would lose everything.”
“Who?”
Vanessa looked toward the operating room.
Daniel thought she meant the patient.
Then Eleanor entered holding a small evidence bag.
The ring had been removed temporarily for imaging.
Daniel identified it instantly.
Inside the band were old scratches.
A tiny chip beside the sapphire.
No doubt.
Ava’s.
Then Dr. Reed showed them something Daniel had never noticed.
The inside engraving had two layers.
The original inscription was worn nearly smooth.
A newer engraving had been added later.
But dried surgical adhesive obscured most of it.
Only three characters were visible:
V-17
Daniel stared.
“What does that mean?”
Reed’s face changed.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Eleanor whispered:
“I’ve seen that code before.”
Where?
Old Mercer Biomedical litigation.
Fifteen years earlier, Daniel’s father Charles had authorized confidential payments tied to a failed medical-device trial.
Patients were not identified by names.
They were codes.
V-17 was one of them.
Daniel looked back toward the woman.
“Was Ava a patient?”
“No,” Eleanor said.
“Then who was V-17?”
She hesitated.
“A woman your father paid almost five million dollars to disappear.”
Daniel felt cold.
May you like
Then Vanessa said:
“And Ava spent ten years trying to find her.”
