Grinder did not take the photograph.
He stared at the man beside his younger self.
The face was unmistakable.
Daniel Mercer.
Twenty-seven years earlier, Daniel had died in a fire at a motorcycle-electrical shop outside Albuquerque.
At least, that was what Grinder had believed.
Helen’s daughter, Claire, looked between them.
“You’re saying a dead man brought my mother that charger?”
Helen shook her head.
“He didn’t say he was dead.”
Grinder crouched beside her wheelchair.
“What exactly did he say?”
Helen closed her eyes, concentrating.
The man came into her hospital room shortly before discharge wearing a maintenance jacket and carrying a replacement charger in unopened packaging.
He introduced himself as Daniel Mercer.
He said the hospital had ordered the wrong adapter.
Then he noticed Helen staring at the old burn scars along his wrist.
“He told me you had the same scars,” she said.
Grinder looked at his own forearm.
He did.
The brothers had received them in the same garage fire.
Claire crossed her arms.
“Then why would he sabotage Mom’s monitor?”
Grinder looked toward the smoking device.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
The supermarket security guard had already called emergency services.
A paramedic arrived and inspected the damaged charger.
The plug itself was counterfeit.
But the battery pack had been altered separately.
Inside the casing, technicians found a thin black transmitter wired beside the temperature sensor.
Helen whispered:
“What does it transmit?”
The paramedic looked at Grinder.
“Location.”
Grinder stood.
Somebody had not simply tried to make the monitor fail.
Somebody wanted to know where Helen went afterward.
Claire’s face tightened.
“Why my mother?”
Helen answered before Grinder could.
“Because of the photograph.”
She had not received it from the man in the hospital.
She had carried it for twenty-seven years.
Grinder finally looked at her.
“Where did you get it?”
Helen’s hands began trembling.
The night Daniel supposedly died, she had been an emergency-room nurse.
Two men arrived from the garage fire.
Grinder.
And Daniel.
Grinder had been unconscious.
Daniel had not.
“He was alive?”
Helen nodded.
“For almost four hours.”
Grinder stepped backward.
The hospital report said Daniel died before arrival.
Helen continued.
Daniel begged her not to register his real name.
He said somebody at the repair shop had deliberately started the fire after discovering he had copied records from a battery supplier.
Helen thought he was delirious.
Then a man in a suit arrived asking whether Daniel Mercer had been admitted.
Daniel heard him.
He panicked.
Helen moved him to another room under an unidentified-patient number.
By morning, Daniel was gone.
“He walked out?”
“No.”
Helen looked at Grinder.
“Someone transferred him.”
No receiving hospital was listed.
No ambulance company claimed the trip.
The unidentified patient vanished from the system.
Grinder’s voice was barely audible.
“And you never told me?”
“I tried.”
Helen had written him three letters.
All were returned.
Then a police detective visited her apartment and told her Daniel’s death had been confirmed.
She believed continuing to ask questions would only hurt the family.
Until that morning.
The man calling himself Daniel entered her hospital room and handed her the replacement charger.
Helen recognized his face immediately.
Older.
Thinner.
Scarred.
But Daniel.
“He told me not to trust the monitor,” she said.
Grinder stared at the transmitter.
“Why didn’t he just tell you what was wrong?”
“He said you’d understand when it failed.”
Grinder looked toward the supermarket windows.
A black sedan had been parked across the street since before the incident.
Its engine started.
Helen saw it too.
“That’s the car.”
Grinder turned.
“The man from your hospital?”
“No.”
Her face went pale.
“The man who came looking for Daniel twenty-seven years ago.”
The sedan pulled away.
But before it reached the intersection, Claire’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
A man’s voice said:
“Tell Gideon the fire wasn’t meant for Daniel.”
Grinder froze.
The caller continued:
“It was meant for him.”