Part 6
I pushed the coffee away so I wouldn’t knock it over.
“Because my doctor put it there.”
Corbett looked toward his partner, then back at me.
“Dr. Philip Bellamy runs a highly regarded practice. He has hospital privileges, a substantial patient list, and no history that explains an accusation like this.”
“He had my braces.”
“For an adjustment.”
“Behind a closed door. For more than forty minutes.”
Corbett rubbed his eyes. “We need more than that.”
“Then search his lab.”
The sharpness in my own voice surprised me. I pulled the blanket closer and made myself continue.
“I drank coffee while he worked. I thanked him when he brought them back. I struggled onto a train because he’d kept me waiting and I was exhausted. That’s what happened.”
The agent glanced at the folder.
“I didn’t agree to carry anything,” I said. “Someone tried to break my knee open for it.”
The door opened before he could answer.
Caleb came in without his jacket. The sleeves of his dark shirt were pushed above his wrists, exposing old scars along his forearms and the newer abrasions on his hands.
For a moment, I looked past him for Rook. He wasn’t there.
An older man in a dark suit entered behind Caleb. Corbett stood when he saw him.
“Director. We’re working through the sequence.”
“Then work through it elsewhere,” the older man said. “Ms. Maddox needs rest and medical care.”
Corbett’s partner opened the door wider and stepped aside.
Caleb stopped beside the table.
“The compartment was machined into a replacement strut,” he said. “She couldn’t have made it with household tools. You know who had the equipment and access.”
“We haven’t excluded every possibility.”
“Exclude this one.” Caleb’s voice remained quiet. “She’s a victim. Her name stays out of your suspect briefings and out of the press. The defense department will be following how she’s treated.”
The director put a hand on the folder and closed it.
“We have grounds for the warrants. Go.”
Corbett gathered the pages. Neither he nor his partner asked me another question.
When the door shut, Caleb looked at the cup I had pushed away, then at my face.
“Have they fed you?”
I couldn’t remember.
He exhaled through his nose, and for an instant the anger he had been holding showed plainly. Then he dragged a chair over, misjudged the leg of the table, and caught it before it made more than a scrape.
“Sorry.” He sat. “What do you need first?”
“Home.”
His eyes met mine.
“I want my own bathroom,” I whispered. “My bed. I don’t want another person asking what I did.”
“You’re going home, Erin.”
He stayed while arrangements were made for a quiet room with a cot. Someone brought food, which I managed a little of, and a fresh blanket that didn’t smell of storage.
I slept before the room’s door had finished closing.
While I was asleep, investigators went to Dr. Bellamy’s apartment.
The account came to me later, in careful pieces. Caleb’s calls had reached people who knew what the stolen research represented, and the warrants had moved quickly once the train evidence and my appointment records were placed together.
In his penthouse office, Bellamy was packing.
The city outside his windows was still dark. He had left the room lights off, relying on a desk lamp and the red indicator on a shredder that had begun to overheat. Strips of paper crowded its bin and spilled onto the floor.
A bag lay open on his desk. He pushed financial certificates into it, then several encrypted drives. His hands, so steady when he adjusted a brace or explained a procedure, kept fumbling against the zipper.
A warning had reached him less than half an hour earlier. The collection had failed. A former SEAL had intervened. He was to destroy what he could and leave.
Bellamy had believed he understood the risk.
Patients came to him because they needed specialized help. Their equipment was complicated, expensive, and difficult for outsiders to examine without assistance. He had learned how often hurried transport staff accepted medical hardware at a glance, and he had mistaken courtesy and inconsistent scrutiny for a guarantee.
An overseas shell company had paid him more than a million dollars to prepare my brace. The handoff was supposed to happen after I reached Philadelphia. I would have been tired, alone, and easy to approach.
He shoved the last drive into the bag and pulled the zipper closed.
Before he reached the office doorway, the apartment’s front door gave way under a federal entry team.
The sound stopped him in place. Officers came through the hall with weapons trained on him, ordering him to show his hands.
The bag fell against his shoe.
Bellamy went to his knees. He was crying before anyone touched him.
Corbett entered behind the team. He looked at the shredder, the documents scattered under the desk, and the packed bag. An officer pulled it away from the doctor and opened it.
“Philip Bellamy,” Corbett said. “You’re under arrest for espionage conspiracy and offenses involving stolen defense information and civilian endangerment.”
Bellamy began talking. He tried to name the people who had contacted him, then stopped to say he had never meant for anybody to be injured.
Corbett read him his rights without responding.
The arrest became public three days later. The official announcement described a large medical and financial fraud investigation with transactions crossing jurisdictional boundaries. The details that explained the train, the prototype, and the armed retrieval crew were kept inside restricted files.
My name did not appear in the release.
I read it at home with my laptop balanced on a pillow and my old braces standing against the bedroom wall. I had turned them so I couldn’t see the left strut.
For a while, I used them only when I had to.
After Bellamy’s indictment, a restricted victim assistance fund paid for replacement equipment and the care required to fit it. I found a university biomedical engineering team in Philadelphia that worked alongside orthotics specialists. They listened to what walking actually cost me before they showed me what they could build.
There were measurements, test fittings, and afternoons spent learning a different balance. The new braces used a lightweight carbon-and-aramid composite, with components made to match my legs rather than forcing my legs to accommodate them.
Nobody promised a cure.
They did remove much of the load I had been carrying. I could walk farther before the spasms began. I could reach my apartment without needing to sit on the floor inside the door.
At the final fitting, I asked to see every part before it was assembled.
The engineer laid the components out on a cloth and let me handle them one by one.
By October, six months after the train, I could take a slow circuit through the city garden near my apartment. The paths were broad and level, and there were benches close enough together that I didn’t have to calculate the whole journey at once.
One cold morning, leaves blew across the pavement and caught around the tips of my crutches. I stopped near the pond to ease a familiar pull in my back.
The new braces were mostly hidden beneath my coat. I liked their quietness. I liked being able to shift without the old metal knocking against whatever stood nearby.
Across the path, a man in a suit stopped to check his phone.
I watched him too long.
I still did that in crowded places. On platforms, I noticed jackets and hands before faces. If someone stood behind me, I moved until I could see him. Some days I stayed home rather than work through the calculations.
The man put his phone away and went on walking.
I loosened my grip on the crutches and looked back at the water.
A low voice came from beside the nearest bench.
“The checking gets easier…”
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