He Picked the Wrong Pharmacist to Threaten 😤

Simone did not put the phone on speaker.

She turned slightly away from Howard and kept her voice level.

"Give me one reason to wait," she said.

"Because Draper isn't the top of this," the voice said.

"He's the middle.

And if you call Reyes right now, the top walks."

"That's exactly what someone protecting the top would say."

A short pause.

Not defensive.

More like the pause of someone recalibrating.

"Fair.

So let me give you something you can verify." Another pause.

"Pull up the regional compliance office's override authorization for the Dalton account.

The one your manager reported six months ago.

Look at the digital signature on the clearance document."

Simone looked at Howard.

He was watching her face, not the screen.

She turned to the terminal and navigated to the compliance records.

The override authorization came up in four clicks.

She found the clearance document.

Found the signature line.

The name was Dr.

Patricia Osei.

Regional Compliance Director.

"I see a name," Simone said carefully.

"Run it against the state licensing board," the voice said.

"Dr.

Osei's license was suspended fourteen months ago.

Before that clearance was ever filed."

Simone's fingers were already moving.

The licensing board database loaded slowly, the way government databases always do.

Then it came up.

Patricia Osei.

License status: suspended.

Date of suspension: fourteen months ago.

Reason: under investigation, fraudulent credential filing.

The clearance document Howard had reported to — the one that had buried his concern for six months — had been signed by someone who had no legal authority to sign anything at the time.

"Someone used her credentials after her suspension," Simone said.

"Someone inside the regional office," the voice confirmed.

"Someone who knew the suspension hadn't been publicly posted yet because the board was still processing the paperwork.

A three-week window.

They used it."

Simone stood very still.

"How do you know all of this?"

"Because I'm the one who filed the original complaint against Osei fourteen months ago," the voice said.

"And then I watched it get buried.

And then I watched the Dalton account get flagged and cleared.

And then I watched an elderly woman stop being able to manage her pain because her medication was being diverted by her own son with help from inside this system." A pause.

"I've been building this for a long time.

I need one more day."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Dr.

James Whitfield.

I was the regional compliance director before Osei.

She replaced me.

And three months after she took the position, I started noticing things that didn't add up."

Simone looked at the clearance document still open on the screen.

"Why didn't you go to the state board yourself?"

"I did.

Twice.

The first complaint was reclassified as a personnel dispute and closed.

The second one is what got Osei suspended — but by then the network she'd built was already operating without her.

Suspension didn't stop it.

It just moved it one level deeper."

Howard had come to stand beside Simone now.

He could hear the voice from the phone.

He was reading the screen.

"What do you need the twenty-four hours for?" Simone asked.

"There's a meeting tomorrow morning," Whitfield said.

"Regional office.

Quarterly compliance review.

Three of the people in that room are part of this.

If Reyes moves tonight, they'll know by morning and the records will be gone before the warrant clears.

But if she moves during the meeting — with the right documentation already in hand — she gets all three of them in one room with no time to coordinate."

"And you have the documentation."

"I have most of it.

I need one thing from you." A pause.

"The dispensing logs for the Dalton account.

The full eleven months.

Not the summary — the raw logs, with the pharmacist authorization codes on each transaction.

I can get them through official channels but it will take four days I don't have."

Simone looked at the terminal.

The logs were right there.

She could pull them in two minutes.

She also knew that sending internal pharmacy records to an unverified caller was a serious breach of protocol.

Possibly illegal.

Definitely the kind of thing that could end her career if it went wrong.

"I'm not sending records to a phone number I can't verify," she said.

"I know," Whitfield said.

"I'm not asking you to send them.

I'm asking you to bring them.

In person.

Today.

To Agent Reyes — but give her the logs and tell her about this call at the same time.

Let her make the decision about the timing.

She's good at her job.

She'll see it."

Simone thought about that.

It was a reasonable ask.

It moved the decision to Reyes, where it belonged.

It didn't require Simone to trust Whitfield completely — only enough to pass the information to someone with the authority to act on it.

"If you're telling the truth," Simone said, "why didn't you call Reyes directly?"

"I did," Whitfield said.

"She didn't answer.

You were the one who was there yesterday.

You were the one who saw the folder." His voice shifted slightly.

"And frankly, I've been watching this pharmacy for three weeks.

I've seen how you work.

You don't look away from things."

The line was quiet for a moment.

Then Simone said: "If I bring those logs to Reyes and she tells me this is wrong — that you're compromised, that waiting is a mistake — I'm going to tell her everything you said.

Including your name."

"I know," Whitfield said.

"That's exactly what you should do."

He hung up.

Howard looked at her.

"What do you want to do?"

Simone looked at the screen.

At the suspended license.

At the forged clearance.

At eleven months of Ruth Dalton's medication being walked out the door.

"Print the logs," she said.

"All eleven months."

Howard moved to the terminal without another word.

Simone picked up Agent Reyes's card and held it in her hand.

Outside, the parking lot was filling up.

A Tuesday morning.

People coming in for blood pressure medication, for insulin, for the small daily things that kept them functional and alive.

Trusting that the system holding those things was clean.

She dialed.

Reyes answered on the second ring.

"Agent Reyes."

"This is Simone Carter.

From the pharmacy." She paused.

"I need to meet with you this morning.

I have the dispensing logs for the Dalton account.

And I just received a phone call I think you need to hear about."

A beat of silence.

Then: "I can be there in twenty minutes."

"There's one more thing," Simone said.

"Someone named James Whitfield says he knows you.

He says there's a meeting tomorrow morning you need to know about."

The silence on the other end lasted three full seconds.

"Lock the logs," Reyes said.

"Don't let anyone else touch that terminal.

I'm on my way."

The call ended.

Simone set the phone down on the counter.

The printer behind her was already running, page after page of transaction records feeding into the tray.

Howard handed her the first stack as it came through.

His hand was steady.

Hers was too.

But when she looked down at the top page — at the first date, the first authorization code, the first name stamped beside an approval that should never have been given — something settled in her chest that felt less like calm and more like the moment before something breaks open.