Chapter 9 - THE PLACE I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO
The construction site was a half-renovated office building in South End.
Julian's company was converting it into medical suites.
The project was behind schedule.
I had been there before.
Months earlier.
Never alone.
Monica obtained the site's security records.
Julian arrived at 6:42 a.m. the morning of my crash.
Left at 8:06.
My accident occurred after six that evening.
So whatever he expected that morning wasn't the crash.
A site supervisor named Kevin remembered Julian behaving strangely.
“He kept asking whether Mrs. Mercer had arrived.”
“Did he say why?”
“Said she was reviewing a structural issue.”
I wasn't.
My firm wasn't involved in that project.
Kevin also remembered Julian asking him to leave the second floor unlocked.
Why?
Nobody knew.
Inspection photographs gave us a possibility.
A section of second-floor flooring had been removed for utility work.
Temporary safety rails surrounded the opening.
Except that morning, according to Kevin, one rail had been moved.
Not removed completely.
Moved enough to create a gap.
Kevin replaced it before lunch because OSHA compliance mattered.
My hands went cold.
Had Julian intended to lure me there?
We couldn't prove it.
No message from him asking me to come.
Only a calendar appointment created through our shared family account.
His presence.
The moved railing.
The prewritten disability paperwork.
Circumstantial.
Terrifying.
Not enough to declare what happened.
Then Kevin found something.
A portable site camera had been operating.
The footage had been archived automatically.
At 7:11 a.m., Julian appeared on the second floor.
He stood beside the opening.
Looked toward the stairs.
Then moved the safety rail approximately two feet.
At 7:38, he checked his phone repeatedly.
At 7:52, he returned the rail almost to its original position.
Almost.
Kevin later corrected it completely.
Nobody could hear what Julian was thinking.
Nobody needed to pretend we could.
The video showed actions.
The rest would require investigation.
Monica advised me not to contact him.
I didn't.
Then Julian contacted me.
From a new number.
One text:
You think you understand what happened Friday. Ask Rachel why you never made it to the site.
I stared at my sister.
She read the message.
Her face changed.
“What?”
Rachel sat beside my rehabilitation bed.
“Audrey, I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“That morning, I called you.”
“I know.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
May you like
“I called because Julian asked me to.”
And suddenly the person I trusted most was inside the timeline too.
