Diana kept her phone hidden in her pocket and forced herself not to look toward the corridor.
Gustavo Valdés was still breathing beneath the white covering.
The man whose paperwork said he was dead had just told her that doctors could not be trusted. He had said they wanted him cremated before anyone discovered what had happened to him. And when Diana asked which company he worked for, he gave her the one answer she had desperately hoped she would never hear.
Her husband’s company.
For several seconds, Diana could hear nothing except the fluorescent lights buzzing above her.
Then came the footsteps.
Someone was approaching the mortuary.
Diana pulled the covering back over Gustavo’s face and pushed the stretcher into position. She lowered her eyes, steadied her breathing, and tried to look like the exhausted temporary worker everyone expected her to be.
The door opened.
Mateo appeared first.
He stopped when he saw Diana beside the stretcher.
“What are you doing over here?”
Diana swallowed. “I bumped the stretcher while cleaning. I was checking the paperwork.”
Mateo looked at the coffin, then at her.
“Don’t touch anything else. The funeral people are already on their way.”
Diana nodded.
He disappeared down the corridor.
Only after his footsteps faded did Diana dare breathe normally again.
She waited several seconds before leaning over Gustavo.
His eyes opened slightly.
“Are they gone?” he whispered.
“For now.”
His breathing was shallow. Diana knew he needed medical attention, but his warning had changed the question. She could no longer simply decide whether to call a doctor. She had to decide which doctor, which hospital employee, which phone number, and which person might already be involved.
“You said they wanted to erase everything,” she whispered. “What everything?”
Gustavo closed his eyes for a moment.
“Records. Payments. Access logs.”
Diana stared at him.
“Why would anyone kill you over records?”
“Because those records prove who was inside the system.”
The answer meant almost nothing to her, but one phrase stayed in her mind.
Inside the system.
Her husband had spent years talking about cybersecurity as though it were an ordinary office job. He complained about employees, deadlines, clients, and security audits. Ricardo had always made Diana feel that his work was too complicated for her to understand.
But suddenly she remembered something.
Two months earlier, when he had gone to the daycare where she worked, Ricardo had not merely argued with her. He had demanded that she quit. He had told the director that Diana’s employment was creating problems for his reputation.
At the time, she had believed he was embarrassed by her job.
Now she wondered whether he had been afraid of something else.
Gustavo moved his hand beneath the covering.
“Your husband knows me?”
Diana hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
Gustavo gave a weak, humorless breath.
“Then you don’t know your husband as well as you think.”
The words hurt because Diana had already begun thinking the same thing.
She remembered Ricardo’s notebook on the kitchen table. Every tortilla, every bar of soap, every bus fare, every medicine purchase had been recorded. He had called it budgeting. Diana had experienced it as surveillance.
He had controlled the account she used for groceries.
He had threatened to shut it down if she looked for another job.
He had made her feel helpless enough that a temporary night shift in a morgue had seemed like the only way to earn money without him knowing.
And now that secret job had placed her beside a man who apparently belonged to the same professional world as her husband.
Diana reached into her pocket and checked her phone without unlocking it.
There was one person she could contact without using the hospital system.
Her aunt Lucía.
But Lucía could not help with a cybersecurity investigation, and Diana did not want to frighten her. More importantly, if Ricardo had access to company systems, Diana had no idea what information could be traced through a phone call or message.
She put the phone away.
“Gustavo,” she whispered, “what should I do?”
He opened his eyes.
“Don’t trust anyone who tells you to stay quiet.”
Before Diana could answer, another sound came from the corridor.
This time it was not Mateo.
A man’s voice spoke softly to someone outside.
Diana recognized it.
Ricardo.
Her husband was at the hospital.
She felt the blood drain from her face.
Ricardo never came to the mortuary. He had no reason to know about her temporary job. Diana had deliberately kept it from him because she knew he would try to stop her.
Yet there he was.
Diana looked at Gustavo.
His eyes were open now.
“That’s him,” he whispered.
Diana’s hand tightened around her phone.
Ricardo’s footsteps came closer.
She had seconds.
She could step into the corridor and pretend she was only doing her job. She could hide Gustavo and hope her husband left. Or she could finally stop behaving as though Ricardo’s approval controlled her life.
Diana pulled the stretcher farther away from the doorway.
Then she noticed something on the floor.
A small plastic identification sleeve had fallen from Gustavo’s paperwork. Inside it was a printed card containing a sequence of numbers and letters.
Gustavo saw her looking at it.
“Take that.”
“What is it?”
“A backup access code.”
Diana stared at the card.
“Why would you have it?”
“Because I was going to expose them.”
The corridor went silent.
Ricardo had stopped outside the door.
Diana could see his shadow beneath it.
The handle began to move.
She slipped the card into the lining of her work jacket just as the door opened.
Ricardo walked in.
He looked exactly as he had looked at home that morning: controlled, impatient, and certain that everyone around him would follow his instructions.
His eyes found Diana.
For one second, neither of them spoke.
Then Ricardo smiled.
“What are you doing here?”
Diana forced herself to answer calmly.
“Working.”
His expression changed almost imperceptibly.
“I told you not to get another job.”
Diana looked past him toward the corridor.
“You came all the way here to tell me that?”
Ricardo’s jaw tightened.
“I came because there was a situation with a client.”
Diana looked at the coffin.
“Gustavo Valdés?”
The change in Ricardo’s face was immediate.
It lasted less than a second.
But Diana saw it.
Fear.
Not grief.
Not surprise.
Fear.
Ricardo recovered quickly.
“Yes,” he said. “He’s dead.”
Diana held his gaze.
“Are you sure?”
Ricardo stared at her.
For the first time since their marriage, Diana watched her husband realize that she had information he could not control.
Behind them, Gustavo remained motionless beneath the covering.
Ricardo stepped closer.
“Why are you asking questions about him?”
Diana did not answer.
Ricardo’s voice became quieter.
“Diana, go home.”
She almost obeyed automatically.
That was how he had controlled her for years. He did not always need to shout. Sometimes one sentence was enough.
But this time, she remembered her aunt’s tired smile.
The living are the ones you have to be more careful with, honey.
Diana stayed where she was.
“No.”
Ricardo blinked.
It was such a small word.
Yet it changed the room.
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
His eyes moved toward the stretcher.
“You don’t understand what you’re involved in.”
Diana answered, “Then explain it to me.”
Ricardo said nothing.
That silence told her more than an explanation would have.
He turned toward the door.
“We’re leaving.”
Diana stepped between him and the stretcher.
“Who is we?”
Ricardo stopped.
She saw his hand move toward his phone.
Diana immediately took hers out too.
“Don’t.”
Ricardo looked at her phone.
“Who have you called?”
“No one.”
It was the truth.
For now.
Ricardo stared at her, trying to determine whether she was bluffing.
Then Gustavo spoke from beneath the covering.
“She knows.”
Ricardo froze.
Diana turned toward the stretcher.
Gustavo slowly pushed the covering away from his face.
Ricardo’s expression collapsed.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Ricardo whispered one word.
“Gustavo.”
The man beneath the covering gave a faint smile.
“You always were bad at pretending people were dead.”
Ricardo took a step backward.
Diana finally understood that the cremation deadline had never been about a grieving family trying to make arrangements quickly.
Someone had needed Gustavo gone before he could speak.
And Ricardo had known exactly why.
But there was still one question Diana could not answer.
If Ricardo was involved, how far did his involvement go?
She thought about the access code hidden in her jacket.
She thought about the records Gustavo had mentioned.
And she thought about every time Ricardo had told her that his work was none of her business.
Diana looked at her husband and realized that the marriage she had spent years trying to preserve might have been built around a secret she had never been allowed to see.
This time, she was not going to ask permission.
She reached for the phone.
Ricardo’s eyes followed the movement.
And when Diana finally unlocked the screen, she already knew the first person she was going to contact.
