Chapter 163: A Level of Imagination

For several seconds, Irial just stared at the photograph of her sister.

Marek did not know what kind of reaction he expected from her after reading the message, but the way her hands tightened around the communication device made him realize that whatever hesitation she had shown earlier was gone. She stood from the chair and looked ready to leave the consultation room without saying anything to them.

“Where are you going?” Marek asked.

“My sister’s house.”

Marek’s brows furrowed. “That’s probably the worst place you can go right now.”

Irial turned toward him. “Someone is watching her.”

“Exactly my point.”

She stopped.

Marek hated saying it while she was clearly worried about her own family, though running toward the building shown in the photograph would only give whoever sent the message another person to follow. They had no idea when the picture had been taken, whether the person who took it remained nearby, or how many people were involved in watching her sister.

Rhovan seemed to agree with him and gestured toward the open doorway. “We’re inside a CMS facility. Use the people whose job involves things like this before running directly toward whoever decided to threaten you. That’s just plain stupidity.”

“You’re probably right.” Irial looked toward the officers outside. “But… you also probably don’t know… a family is like a lifeline to some people like me.”

Rhovan just stared at her and thought about Marek. ‘Probably…’

She brought the message to the nearest officer, and within several minutes, the meeting they had been having about financial schedules had turned into another statement. Two officers entered the consultation room while another contacted the local CMS station nearest her sister’s residence. Irial was also asked to call her sister without mentioning where she currently was.

Her sister answered after several rings.

Irial looked like she had been holding her breath the entire time. “Are you inside?”

Marek could not hear the other side clearly from where he sat, though Irial relaxed enough for him to know the answer.

“Stay there. Lock the door and don’t leave until someone from the CMS arrives. No, don’t go downstairs. Just stay where you are.”

Her sister must have asked something because Irial glanced toward the officers before answering. “I’ll explain later. Someone took a picture of you outside the building.”

The reaction from the other side was loud enough that Kellan heard it too.

He leaned closer to Silas. “I think she understood.”

Silas looked at him. “I’m impressed you managed to determine that.”

Kellan opened his mouth before remembering that everyone else in the room was dealing with a threat against someone’s family. He just glared at Silas and kept quiet.

Irial continued speaking with her sister until an officer confirmed that personnel were already heading toward the residence. From what Marek understood, the CMS could arrange temporary protective relocation after assessing the threat, although her sister would still need to agree to leave. Irial’s parents would also be contacted because the message had made it impossible to assume that whoever was threatening her had stopped with one relative.

Marek sat near the end of the table and watched the whole thing. He had wanted to distance himself from this problem less than an hour ago.

Now, he was watching officers write down names of Irial’s relatives.

‘This keeps getting worse.’

One of the officers asked to see the photograph and the message without taking Irial’s device away from her. He recorded the account that sent it, the time it arrived, and several other details Marek did not understand. Silas paid much more attention to that part and even reminded Irial not to delete anything from the conversation regardless of how uncomfortable seeing the photograph made her.

“Don’t forward it around either,” Silas added. “If the original message matters later, let them preserve whatever information comes with it.”

Irial nodded.

The officer looked toward Silas. “You work investigations?”

“I used to.”

The officer just nodded.

Silas also did not explain further.

After the first rush of questions passed, everyone returned to the photograph. The message itself was vague enough to become another problem.

SHE HAS UNTIL TOMORROW.

‘Until tomorrow for what?’

The first warning had told Irial to return what she copied, which made the most obvious answer the financial records. However, there was no location, no person to contact, no instruction on how she was supposed to return them, and no guarantee that surrendering the copies would make her family safe.

Marek asked one of the officers whether that meant another message was likely coming.

“It could,” the man answered. “Or they may expect Ms. Venipra to contact someone she already knows.”

Irial shook her head. “I don’t know who I’d contact.”

“What about your employer?”

“If I call my supervisor and say someone threatened my sister over copied schedules, I’d have to explain why I copied them.”

“Which you’re probably going to have to do at some point anyway,” Marek said.

Irial looked at him.

He shrugged. “I’m not saying you should call them right now.”

Rhovan rested his back against one of the walls. “Whoever sent the message wants you to feel like you have less time than you actually have. The deadline matters, but letting them decide every action you take between now and tomorrow would be stupid.”

Marek glanced toward him.

That was probably the most useful thing anyone had said since the message arrived.

Irial seemed to think about it as well.

“So what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

“Keep your family somewhere safe. Preserve the records. Let the CMS deal with the threat while we figure out whether those documents are worth threatening somebody over.”

Marek looked toward Rhovan. “You said we.”

“I did.”

“You were the one warning us not to get involved.”

“I still am.”

Marek looked at him strangely.

Rhovan raised one brow. “Newton, we’re already sitting beside unauthorized financial records while someone threatens the owner’s family. I think pretending we’re completely uninvolved would require a level of imagination even I don’t possess.”

Kellan laughed from the other side of the room. After a while, he choked for some reason.

‘Well, karma…’

Marek wanted to argue, he could. It just would not make Rhovan wrong.

The CMS officers remained with them for almost another hour. Irial’s sister agreed to leave her residence after officers arrived, and arrangements were made for her to stay somewhere else for the night. Her parents lived farther away and had not received anything unusual, although Irial asked that they be warned anyway.

Although the warning might be good enough, it wasn’t a solution to the real problem at hand. The threat itself and the financial records tied to it remained.

And after Eren spent part of the hour rereading the schedules while everyone else dealt with the message, he had more questions than before.

Marek noticed when Eren started comparing the same three pages again. “Did you find something else?”

Eren looked up. “I’m checking something.”

Marek nodded and moved closer to the table.

Eren had arranged several schedules beside each other. One came from a clinic-support contract, another from patient transport, while the third appeared to involve a mobile treatment provider. Marek understood the names and the amounts. The relationship between them was harder to see.

“They’re different services,” Marek said.

“Yes.”

“So?”

Eren pointed toward a group of entries. “Different providers. Different contracts. The revisions were prepared through different people too.”

“And you’re interested because?”

“The payment references.”

Marek leaned closer.

Two of the schedules contained a secondary payee name that looked unfamiliar to him. The third had the same name buried lower in the supporting details.

“That’s the same company,” Marek said.

Eren nodded. “It appears in all three.”