Chapter 223: It wasn’t an accident
The corridor outside Amara’s room was empty.
Julian walked to the far end of it, away from the nurses’ station, away from the guards, to the place where the corridor turned, and there was a window that looked out over the hospital car park and beyond it the city going about its ordinary Tuesday morning business, completely indifferent to everything that had happened inside this building in the last four days.
He took out his phone.
He stood at the window, and he made the call, and he kept his voice low and his eyes on the car park below where ordinary people were doing ordinary things, walking to their cars, carrying flowers, smoking near the entrance in the way hospital visitors did, wrapped in their own particular griefs and anxieties and hopes.
"The cameras," he said when the line connected. "Bring everything to me. Every hour of footage. Every floor."
"Sir." The voice on the other end was careful. Experienced enough to know when Julian’s quiet meant something different from his loud. "We didn’t miss anything. We’ve had eyes on every.."
"I will find out myself," Julian said, "whether you did or did not." A pause. "Yes, sir."
"Every floor," Julian repeated. "Every entrance. The nursery ward specifically. All of it."
He ended the call. Stood at the window.
His reflection looked back at him from the glass, pale with tiredness, eyes that had not had real sleep in more days than he wanted to count, the particular hollowness of a man who had been running on something other than rest for long enough that he’d forgotten what rest felt like.
He stood there, and he thought. Something had been sitting at the edge of his awareness since Seb walked into Amara’s room.
Not the walk-in itself, Seb’s arrival was anticipated, was the kind of move Julian had already mapped and prepared for.
And not Kalian’s presence, though that too had its own significance that was still being processed in the part of Julian that processed things slowly and thoroughly.
Something else. Something smaller. More specific. The way Seb had looked at the babies. Not with the hunger of a man trying to establish a claim that Julian had expected.
But with the particular quality of someone who had already confirmed something. Who was not discovering information so much as presenting it.
The DNA test had not surprised Seb. Not genuinely. He had stood in that room with the posture of a man who already knew what the envelope contained before it was opened.
Which meant information had moved. From somewhere inside this hospital to somewhere outside it.
And that thread, that small, tight thread, was the one Julian kept pulling at as he stood at the window and watched the car park and waited for his phone to ring back.
It rang at eleven minutes.
"Sir." The voice was different now. The careful had become something else. Something that recognised it was about to deliver something unwelcome to a man who did not take unwelcome information well.
"There was, there was an incident on the second night. A small fire. In the other nursery. The public ward."
Julian said nothing. The voice continued. "It was contained quickly. Minor. The fire suppression system handled most of it before anyone was at risk." A pause.
"But three newborns from that ward were temporarily transferred to the VIP nursery while the area was cleared and assessed. Standard protocol for infant safety. They were back in their ward within the hour."
Julian’s hand tightened on the phone.
"That," he said slowly, "is the only incident?"
"Yes, sir. That was, that was the only deviation from the security routine. Everything else was..."
"Who authorised the transfer?" A longer pause.
"It went through the duty nurse on the ward. Standard emergency protocol doesn’t require.. It’s automatic in that situation, sir. The VIP nursery is the nearest designated safe."
"I understand the protocol," Julian said. Still quiet. Still even. The voice he used when he needed his mind to work faster than his anger. "Who was in the VIP nursery during the transfer?"
Silence.
The kind of silence that was not the absence of an answer but the presence of one that hadn’t been checked yet. That hadn’t been thought to check until this exact moment.
"Get me that footage," Julian said. "Specifically, that window. The transfer in, the transfer out, and everything in between. Everyone who entered that nursery during that period. Staff, visitors, anyone who passed the glass." He paused. "And I want to know who started that fire."
"Sir—"
"It wasn’t an accident," Julian said simply.
He said it the way you said things you had already finished deciding.
Not a conclusion being reached in real time, a fact being stated. Because Julian knew, in the place where he knew things before the evidence fully caught up, that the fire had been small for a reason.
Had been contained for a reason. Had done exactly enough damage to do exactly one thing, create the protocol conditions that moved three newborns into a different room.
A room where his children were. A room where, if you had the right access and the right excuse and the right window of time, you could get very close to something you needed to get close to.
He thought about Sebastian at the nursery glass.
About how long Sebastian had been standing there before anyone noticed him. About what Sebastian had looked like, certain, settled, a man who had not come to find out something but to confirm it.
He thought about the DNA result.
About the specific, unambiguous certainty with which Seb had stood in Amara’s room and not been surprised by a single thing the envelope contained.
Julian pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
Breathed once.
A fire small enough to be contained. A transfer brief enough to look like protocol. A window, one hour, the guard had said, back in their ward within the hour, that was all someone would need.
For what, exactly, Julian did not yet know.
That was what frightened him.
