Chapter 2 - THE ROOM WITHOUT WINDOWS
Sleep in a hospital is not really sleep.
It is a series of short disappearances interrupted by machines, footsteps, blood-pressure cuffs, and strangers asking you to rate pain with a number.
I hated the number question.
After twenty strikes, reducing pain to a scale of ten felt insulting.
I told one nurse six.
Then eight.
Then four after medication.
None of the answers meant anything except that she was trying to help me and I was trying to remain cooperative.
At some point before dawn, I woke and saw my father asleep in the chair with his chin against his chest.
His phone rested in one hand.
The screen still showed unread messages.
He had apparently stopped answering the world long enough to sit beside me.
That was unusual enough to become its own kind of evidence.
Charles Sterling answered markets from airplanes, weddings, funerals, and once the middle of my college graduation ceremony.
He had spent my childhood believing availability was a form of responsibility.
Now he was unavailable to everyone except me.
I watched him for several minutes and understood how much seven years had changed his face.
There were lines around his mouth I did not remember.
A pale scar near his temple.
More gray than dark in his hair.
Estrangement preserves people at the age you last allowed yourself to know them.
Reality ages them without permission.
I wondered what changes he saw in me that had nothing to do with bruises.
I wondered whether we would still know how to speak once crisis stopped giving us a script.
Then the monitor beeped, he woke instantly, and the questions began before either of us could answer that one.
I woke beneath fluorescent lights with my father sitting in a plastic chair that looked too small for him.
For several seconds, I did not know where I was.
Then my body remembered before my mind did.
Pain moved through me in layers.
My shoulder burned.
My forearm throbbed inside a temporary splint.
My back felt as though someone had stretched hot wire beneath my skin.
A monitor beeped beside me with maddening calm.
My father was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
He had removed his tie.
I had never seen him in public without one.
“Dad.”
His head lifted immediately.
“I’m here.”
The words were the same ones he had used beside the ambulance.
This time, I believed them.
“What time is it?”
“Three forty-two.”
“Morning?”
“Yes.”
I tried to sit up.
Pain stopped me halfway.
“Don’t.”
He reached toward me, then stopped before his hand touched my shoulder.
The hesitation broke something open inside my chest.
“You can touch me.”
His face crumpled for less than a second.
Then his hand closed gently around mine.
I had forgotten how large his hands were.
I had forgotten how safe they once made me feel.
“I should have called you years ago,” I whispered.
“No.”
“I should have come home.”
“Clare.”
“I was so angry.”
“So was I.”
“I thought you wanted me to fail.”
He shook his head.
“I wanted to be wrong about him.”
That answer hurt because it was kinder than the one I had prepared myself to hear.
A doctor entered before I could respond.
She introduced herself as Dr. Anita Patel and spoke with the controlled directness of someone accustomed to delivering facts people did not want.
“You have a fractured left ulna, a severe contusion to the right thigh, extensive soft-tissue injuries across your back and shoulders, several lacerations to your hands, and a concussion.”
I looked toward my father.
His jaw tightened with each diagnosis.
“The good news is there is no internal bleeding and no spinal injury.”
“Can I go home?”
“No.”
The answer came from both Dr. Patel and my father at the same time.
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
It hurt immediately.
Dr. Patel almost smiled.
“You’ll stay for observation through the morning.”
She glanced at the door.
“A detective is waiting to speak with you when you’re ready.”
My father stood.
“She can wait.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“I want to do it now.”
“Clare, you don’t have to prove anything tonight.”
“I know.”
“Then rest.”
“I rested for seven years while he rewrote my life around me.”
The sentence came out harder than I expected.
My father slowly sat back down.
“All right.”
Dr. Patel left.
A minute later, Detective Mara Ortiz entered with a small recorder, a notebook, and the same close-cropped hair I had seen in the penthouse.
She was the patrol officer from earlier.
“You changed jobs quickly,” I said.
One corner of her mouth moved.
“I was plainclothes when dispatch sent the call.”
She pulled the chair closer.
“I work domestic violence and financial crimes joint cases when they overlap.”
My father looked at her.
“Why would they overlap here?”
Ortiz opened her notebook.
“That is one of several things I want to understand.”
She looked at me.
“Ms. Hayes, I need you to tell me exactly what happened from the moment your husband came home.”
So I did.
I told her about the garage cameras.
I told her about Lauren.
I told her about the perfume, the Marea receipt, the Hamptons tax notice, and the tiny blue sock beneath Matthew’s passenger seat.
I told her the first blow landed at 11:17 p.m.
I told her I counted twenty.
I told her he never shouted.
Ortiz stopped writing.
“He counted too?”
I nodded.
“Not at first.”
“When did he start?”
“After six.”
“What did he say?”
I closed my eyes.
The memory came back with terrible clarity.
Seven.
That one is for the board dinner.
Eight.
That one is for checking my phone.
Nine.
That one is for thinking you still have a name that matters.
My eyes opened.
“He attached reasons to them.”
Ortiz’s expression did not change, but her pen stopped moving.
“Did he say anything suggesting someone else knew what he was doing?”
I thought of Lauren’s perfume on his collar.
Then something else surfaced.
A blue light.
Small.
Blinking.
On the console beneath the television.
My heart began to pound.
“The speaker.”
“What speaker?”
“We have a smart speaker in the living room.”
My father leaned forward.
“What about it?”
“The light was on.”
“During the assault?” Ortiz asked.
“I think so.”
“Was it recording?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it on a call?”
I stared at the blanket over my legs.
Matthew had upgraded the apartment’s home system six months earlier.
He loved using voice commands for everything.
Lights.
Music.
Calls.
Video conferences.
One night he had called me from the kitchen using the living room speaker just to prove he could.
“There’s a hands-free calling function.”
Ortiz wrote three words in her notebook.
“Who could he have called?”
“I don’t know.”
My father’s phone vibrated.
He looked at it and stood.
“Excuse me.”
Ortiz watched him walk toward the windowless door.
“This room has terrible reception,” she said.
“He’ll find some.”
“He usually does?”
“He usually finds everything.”
She looked at me for a moment.
“You haven’t spoken to him in seven years.”
It was not a question.
I turned my head.
“Did Matthew tell you that?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“Your husband’s attorney.”
I stared at her.
“What attorney?”
Ortiz closed her notebook.
“At 1:08 a.m., less than an hour after we entered your apartment, Matthew Hayes called a criminal defense attorney named Victor Sloan.”
I knew the name.
Everyone in corporate Manhattan knew the name.
Sloan did not defend drunk executives in bar fights.
He defended men whose names appeared above skyscraper entrances.
“He already has Sloan?”
“Yes.”
“How does Sloan know I haven’t spoken to my father?”
Ortiz leaned back.
“That is what interested me.”
The door opened.
My father returned with a printed document in his hand.
He placed it face down on the table.
“Detective, I assume you know who Victor Sloan is.”
“I do.”
“He contacted our counsel at 2:51.”
“Why?”
“To advise us that Clare allegedly attacked Matthew first.”
The room went silent.
I actually laughed.
It sounded ugly.
“With what?”
My father’s mouth tightened.
“A crystal vase.”
I stared at him.
“The vase fell after he hit my thigh.”
“I know.”
Ortiz opened her notebook again.
“What injuries is he claiming?”
My father turned the paper over.
A photograph was printed at the top.
Matthew sat in what looked like a private clinic exam room.
A narrow cut crossed his right temple.
A bruise darkened beneath his collarbone.
I felt sick.
“He didn’t have that cut when he left.”
“You’re sure?” Ortiz asked.
“Yes.”
“He stood over me.”
“I saw his face.”
“No blood.”
“No cut.”
My father tapped the page.
“Sloan says Matthew went to a concierge physician at 12:32.”
“That’s after the Belgrave.”
Ortiz nodded.
“We have him arriving at the hotel before midnight and leaving through a service exit at 12:17.”
“Where is Lauren?”
“Unknown.”
My pulse quickened.
“What do you mean unknown?”
“She left the hotel at 12:23 in a car registered to a Thorne Family Holdings company.”
My father and Ortiz exchanged a look.
I hated it immediately.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Neither answered.
“Dad.”
He picked up the document.
“Lauren Thorne’s father sits on the board of Meridian National Bank.”
The name landed like cold water.
Meridian was NexusCore’s primary commercial bank.
More than primary.
Meridian held our revolving credit facility, payroll concentration accounts, and the escrow for the acquisition Matthew had spent a year trying to close.
“That’s why she was at our board dinners.”
My father nodded.
“That is one reason.”
“What is the other?”
He hesitated.
I had never known my father to hesitate around information.
That frightened me.
“Tell me.”
“Thorne Family Holdings owns twelve percent of NexusCore through three separate funds.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“I checked.”
“I reviewed our cap table last quarter.”
“You reviewed the management cap table.”
“There’s only one cap table.”
“There should be.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Ortiz slid a paper bag toward me.
My belongings.
Phone.
Wedding ring.
One torn earring.
The bloodstained cuff cut from my blouse.
My phone screen lit with dozens of missed calls.
Board members.
Employees.
Unknown numbers.
Then a message appeared from Matthew.
I stopped breathing.
My father saw my face.
“What?”
I turned the screen toward them.
The message contained one sentence.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU JUST STARTED.
Ortiz photographed it immediately.
Then another message arrived.
This one was from a number I did not recognize.
The text contained no words.
Only an audio file.
Twenty-three minutes long.
Ortiz reached for the phone.
“Don’t play it.”
“Why?”
“Preserve it first.”
She pulled a forensic evidence bag from her case.
My father stared at the file name visible on the screen.
HOME_CALL_1117_PM.m4a.
My mouth went dry.
Eleven seventeen.
The exact minute of the first strike.
Ortiz looked at me.
“Was your smart speaker account linked to your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Could someone send you a recording from it?”
“Not normally.”
“Then someone else has a copy.”
My father’s eyes narrowed.
“Who sent this?”
Ortiz wrote down the number.
“I’ll find out.”
The phone vibrated again before she sealed it.
A second message appeared.
This time there were words.
I DIDN’T KNOW HE WOULD GO THAT FAR.
Then another.
HE MADE ME LISTEN.
I felt every hair on my arms rise.
Ortiz looked at the screen.
My father did too.
A third message arrived.
PLEASE DON’T TELL HIM I SENT THIS.
The sender had finally attached a name.
May you like
LAUREN.
TWENTY STRIKES
