Chapter 5: The Version Ryan Wants Told
Arthur drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes moving between the road and the rearview mirror. Mariana sat beside him, her phone clenched in her palm, the hospital’s last update still glowing on the screen: Leo’s numbers were holding.
She’d left him under the nurses’ watch because someone had to find out where that camera came from. The thought of walking into Ryan’s company made her stomach knot, but the thought of letting him decide which records survived was worse.
“Stay beside me,” Arthur said.
“I am.”
“I know.” His gaze flicked to her face. “I just needed to hear you say it.”
The company occupied three floors of a glass tower where the afternoon sun flashed off the windows hard enough to make Mariana squint. Inside, a wall-sized display looped images of clean, bright homes and smiling families, every room quietly watched over by the company’s security products.
The lobby smelled of citrus polish and coffee. Employees passed the reception desk with laptops tucked under their arms, glancing at Mariana and Arthur, then looking away a beat too late.
At the front desk, Mariana gave her name. The receptionist’s smile stalled when she saw it on the visitor screen.
“Mr. Hale is in a meeting,” she said.
“Please tell him I’m here to ask about a device identifier from the hotel.”
The woman’s eyes lifted. “I’m sorry?”
“Tell him exactly that.”
Arthur stood half a pace behind Mariana, quiet and solid. The receptionist picked up the phone. As she spoke into it, Mariana watched a man in a company badge cross the lobby, slow when he recognized her, then keep walking.
Ryan appeared before the receptionist had finished her call.
He wore a dark suit and the warm, easy smile he used when someone was filming. He crossed the floor as if he’d been delighted to find her there, and an employee near the elevators smiled back at him.
“Mariana,” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“That’s why I came.”
His gaze touched Arthur, then returned to her. “Could we talk somewhere private?”
“No. I want to know who handled the camera’s device batch.”
The receptionist suddenly found something important to do on her screen. Ryan’s smile stayed in place, but the muscles around his eyes tightened.
“You’re turning a family crisis into a spectacle.”
“I’m asking about equipment connected to the room where our son stopped breathing normally.”
A pair of employees paused near the elevator. Ryan lowered his voice without losing the smile.
“You don’t know that it was connected to Leo.”
“I know it was in the suite. I know someone tried to erase its storage. I know its casing resembles equipment I’ve seen here.”
“You know what you think you know.”
The old reflex rose in her—to defend the way she’d said it, to make the question gentler so he might answer. She let the reflex pass without obeying it.
“Then help me establish what’s true.”
Ryan’s eyes held hers. For a second, the lobby’s bright display washed his face in cheerful blue light, making his stillness look almost kind.
“Arthur has you convinced everyone around me is part of some plot,” he said. “You’re exhausted. Leo is sick. This is not the place to—”
“Don’t tell me what I’m convinced of.”
His smile faltered. It returned when he noticed the employees watching.
“Of course,” he said, his voice carrying just enough to sound patient. “I’m trying to keep this from getting worse.”
Arthur shifted beside her. “Then answer the question.”
Ryan turned toward him. “You don’t work here, Mr. Delgado.”
“No,” Arthur said. “I don’t.”
Nora Bell stepped out from a corridor behind the reception desk. Mariana recognized her from Ryan’s company events: neatly dressed, composed, with a tablet held against her side. Her security-chief badge caught the light as she approached.
“Is there a problem?” Nora asked.
“Nothing that needs an audience,” Ryan said.
Nora looked at Mariana. Her expression gave nothing away, but her thumb pressed hard against the tablet’s edge.
“We’re asking about a device identifier,” Mariana said. “A camera found in the hotel suite.”
Nora’s eyes flicked to Ryan before she answered. It was quick enough that someone else might have missed it. Mariana didn’t.
“I can’t confirm that any company device was installed at the hotel,” Nora said.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know.” Nora’s voice was even, but her fingers had tightened around the tablet. “If you have an identifier, I can tell you whether it’s associated with equipment our team handles.”
Ryan stepped closer. “Nora, this isn’t the time.”
A silence opened between them. The lobby display changed to a sunlit nursery, a mobile turning above an empty crib.
Nora looked at Ryan again. This time she held his gaze a fraction longer.
“Do you have the identifier?” she asked Mariana.
Mariana glanced at Arthur. He gave the smallest nod.
She took out the note Detective Park had made from the label on the camera. She didn’t hand it over; she read the characters aloud.
Nora’s face didn’t change, but her eyes lowered to the tablet.
“That code belongs to a limited security batch handled by my team,” she said.
Ryan’s smile disappeared.
Nora continued before he could speak. “That doesn’t tell us who used a unit, or where it went. I can’t confirm an installation from a code alone.”
“Then give us the inventory record,” Mariana said.
“I can’t provide internal records in the lobby.”
“You can tell us where to ask for them.”
Ryan made a quiet, disbelieving sound. “You’re demanding company information in front of my staff because you’ve decided I’m guilty.”
“I haven’t decided what you are. I’m asking what that device was doing in our room.”
“Your father has a talent for making every disagreement sound like an investigation.”
Arthur’s face stayed still. “This isn’t a disagreement.”
The words landed without force, which made them harder to brush aside. Ryan looked at him, then at Mariana. Behind Ryan, an employee pretended to check his phone, though Mariana could see the screen was dark.
Ryan leaned closer. His voice became private, stripped of the lobby smile.
“You want to do this here? In front of people who work for me? You want them thinking I put a camera over my own wife and son?”
Mariana felt the sting of the word wife, offered like a claim he still expected her to honor.
“I want the person who placed it there to answer for it.”
“You don’t understand what you’re risking.”
“I understand Leo is in a hospital bed.”
For one brief instant, Ryan’s face changed. Something raw moved behind his eyes—fear, anger, or both. Then he glanced toward the employees and put the smile back on.
“Go back to the hospital,” he said. “Let the doctors handle Leo. Stop dragging other people into this.”
“They’re already in it.”
She turned before he could make her defend the decision. Arthur walked with her toward the glass doors, never reaching for her arm, never asking her to calm down. The freedom to keep moving felt like its own small kindness.
At the threshold, Mariana glanced over her shoulder. Nora was still near reception, tablet against her side, her gaze fixed on the floor. Ryan stood with two employees now, smiling as he spoke, as though nothing had happened.
Outside, the sunlight had faded behind a veil of marine haze. Arthur unlocked the car.
“Did you see Nora look at him?” Mariana asked.
“I did.”
“Was that fear?”
Arthur didn’t answer immediately. “It was something.”
They were halfway across the parking lot when Mariana’s phone vibrated. An unfamiliar number. A message appeared without a name.
Tomorrow, 6:30 p.m. The coffee shop on Mateo. Come alone.
A second message followed.
Ryan checks your father’s car. Don’t let him drive you there.
Mariana stopped walking.
Arthur saw her face and reached for his keys. “What is it?”
She read him the messages. His expression tightened, but he didn’t look toward the building.
The glass doors slid open behind them.
Mariana turned. Through the lobby, Ryan was watching the parking lot. Not smiling now. Not speaking to anyone.
May you like
Her phone vibrated once more.
Delete this. He checks your father’s car.
