“I know.”
“No one gets near her.”
Megan looked at him.
“You can’t promise that.”
“No.”
The answer surprised her.
Most powerful men promised things they could not control because admitting limits offended them.
Gabriel continued, “But I can promise no one reaches her without going through me first.”
Megan’s throat tightened.
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t intended to be.”
It was.
She simply refused to tell him.
The pressure outside the gates kept building.
Thomas received another visit, this one from men who left before police arrived.
Someone tried to learn whether Megan had been transferred from Harbor Medical.
Calls came from numbers that disconnected when answered.
Each move revealed the same thing Gabriel had told her on the first morning.
They were still afraid.
And frightened powerful people made mistakes.
One arrived when Megan was reviewing her reconstructed notes.
A name she remembered from an interview connected to a location in Gabriel’s folder.
Then another.
Then a third.
Megan sat completely still.
Gabriel noticed from across the room.
“What?”
She did not answer.
She pulled three pages together.
The pattern had been buried before because she had treated the names as separate branches of the investigation.
The attack had changed the perspective.
She looked at Gabriel.
“They didn’t burn my office because of what I had already proved.”
His gaze sharpened.
“They burned it because of what I was about to connect.”
Megan showed him the pages.
Gabriel read them once.
Then again.
His expression became colder with every line.
“Can this stand?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“What does it need?”
“Independent confirmation.”
“From whom?”
Megan gave him a name already embedded in her years of work.
Gabriel did not tell her what he planned.
She did not ask him to threaten anyone.
Instead, they worked the way each of them understood power best.
Megan followed evidence.
Gabriel created enough safety for evidence to survive.
Confirmation came gradually, not cleanly.
A frightened voice verified one piece.
Another connection matched a detail Megan remembered from an earlier interview.
Thomas supplied the exact time the men had approached him, which aligned with the movement Gabriel’s people had traced after the hospital.
No single fact was dramatic.
Together they formed a structure.
