I hit the street and caught a lucky cab right out front. The driver took me to Dean’s place, and I got out and stormed up to his front door. My heart was pounding when I knocked and the cab drove away behind me. I pictured a broken man, wrecked by his own sorrow, torn asunder by his pain—and instead Dean opened the door, looking freshly showered, a smile on his face.
“I was wondering when you’d show up.”
I stared at him. “I heard. About you getting fired.”
“Come inside.”
I followed him into the kitchen. He cleaned up against a counter and sipped a half-empty glass of whiskey—probably why he seemed to happy.
“Are you okay?” I asked, lingering near the table.
“I’m fine. Honestly, I should’ve seen it coming.”
I shook my head. “It’s messed up, Dean. She can’t fire you. I mean, does she even have that power?”
“Apparently. Security escorted me out.”
I grimaced. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s really okay.” He put the glass down. “We have another job to do.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“The accounting firm that does Mercy’s taxes has an office out in the suburbs. We’re going to break in and—”
I held up my hands. “Hold on, Dean, wait, hold on. What the hell are you talking about, accountants?”
“We need documents to prove that Maria’s been moving money around. The only place that’ll have those documents that haven’t been altered in some way is this accounting firm. I already called them and pretended to be working for Maria, and they said they have the files in the Doylestown office, and—”
“Dean,” I said, my voice harder than intended, but I couldn’t let him keep going. “You got fired. Why are you still talking about this?”
He blinked, surprised, and tilted his head. “Because Maria’s still in power at Mercy, whether I work there or not, and I’m going to make sure she’s stopped.”
I stood there, trying to understand. When he worked at the hospital, he had a thousand reasons to want to put himself on the line to get rid of a corrupt official like Maria. That sort of thing got people killed, even if only in incidental ways, but still, it was dangerous and any doctor would want to root it out. But he didn’t work at Mercy anymore, and going after Maria wouldn’t benefit him.
“You can’t let this go, can you?”
He shook his head. “I really can’t.”
“Even if you have no stake anymore.”
“I always have a stake. Maybe I don’t work there anymore, but I’m still a doctor, and I care about those patients. Plus, fuck Maria for firing me.”
I smiled a little at that. “So you’re really okay?”
“Really. I’m going to find a new job somewhere else. And in the meantime, I’m going to dedicate myself to making sure Maria burns.”
I nodded slowly and felt a strange excitement bubble in my stomach. “So, uh, about this whole breaking and entering thing.”
He finished his drink and set it down. “It’s a pretty small accounting firm, maybe fifty clients in all, and Mercy is probably their biggest. I doubt they’ll have state of the art security.”
“You plan on, what, breaking in through the front?”
“Pretty much.” He grinned at me. “I’m going to break a window and climb in that way.”
My eyes went wide. “Dean—”
“Just kidding. I convinced the secretary to fax them over to the neurology department at Mercy. All you’ve got to do is walk inside, find the papers, and bring them out.”
“You’re insane. That’s insane. What if someone realizes what they are?”
He gave me a look. “You work in a hospital. You really think anyone’s going to look at a bunch of paperwork twice?”
“Fair point,” I said, shaking my head. Hospitals were notoriously inefficient and outdated, and I’d seen my fair share of important-looking papers lying around randomly, and never once bothered to inspect them. He was probably right, nobody would think to check them out, and yet it wasn’t an enormous risk to take. “When is she sending them over?”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Apparently she needs the day to get it all together.” He shrugged and came toward me.
“How much paper are we talking about?”
“Financial statements from the last three years. Can’t be that much.”
I rubbed my temples as he stopped right in front of me. I looked up into his eyes and I wanted to call him crazy, wanted to push him away and storm out of here—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Truth was, I admired him.
I wasn’t sure I would keep pushing if I were in his position. If Maria fired me, I could imagine myself walking away and giving up. I knew this was going to be hard, that it might take some sacrifice, but I didn’t picture my entire life changing so drastically because of it. The mobsters trying to intimidate me were bad enough, but losing my job at the hospital I loved the most would be going too far.