Chapter 110: Mina's Empty Office
Seventeen days after the warning letter, the committee was drafting protection terms and checking report routes. It had received no Mina material or issued a subpoena. Northstar remained delayed.
Mina Park's office was empty when the special committee went to serve its interview request.
Not ransacked.
Not abandoned in the middle of work.
Empty.
Her company laptop remained on the desk under a signed IT seal. Active project files had been transferred to an approved custodian. Her books, photographs, and ceramic cup were gone.
Human Resources confirmed that Mina had requested leave through counsel the previous afternoon.
The committee had been preparing a subpoena because her name appeared in old safety-routing logs. It had not yet issued one. No one knew whether she would cooperate, and no one had authority to treat a clean desk as evidence of guilt or danger.
Her calendar showed approved leave, not a vanished appointment. Building security confirmed she had exited normally during staffed hours. Those facts established an orderly departure from company space, not where she went or what she knew.
Celeste's lawyer called it flight.
The committee chair rejected the word.
"We have a leave notice and counsel contact," she said. "We do not have a missing person."
The correction entered the minutes before rumor could become an investigative premise.
At eleven fourteen, Rhea received a secure message from Mina's own lawyer.
My client is safe. She has not been harmed and has not disappeared. She is entering a protected legal and compliance process. She will not provide substantive testimony until scope, retaliation safeguards, and patient privacy protections are in place.
The message authorized disclosure of those four sentences to the special committee.
Nothing else.
No location.
No patient name.
No medical record.
No account of what Mina had witnessed.
I read the message from my new board seat. Relief arrived first. Then discipline.
Mina's safety did not make her available to us.
Her lawyer, not Sterling, would decide how contact occurred. The committee could negotiate a protected order or pursue lawful process. It could not use concern as permission to expose her.
"Do we suspend the subpoena request?" one director asked.
"We hold it while counsel confers," independent counsel said. "Voluntary protected participation is now possible. It is not promised."
The chair approved the pause.
It also prohibited management from contacting Mina's relatives, former colleagues, or personal accounts while counsel was available. Concern did not authorize pressure.
Mina's access logs showed no entry into restricted research systems after her leave began. IT preserved the company laptop without opening protected personal communications. Facilities photographed the office and closed it. No one searched her home, personal cloud accounts, or lawyer's files.
That afternoon, Sterling's compliance portal received a one-line anomaly report through Mina's counsel.
LOOK FOR THE SAFETY REPORTS THAT WERE NEVER FORMALLY SUBMITTED.
The report included no attachments.
It named no patient.
It accused no person.
It did not identify how many reports existed, when they were drafted, or whether any survived. The sentence was a search direction, not testimony.
The portal generated a receipt and routed the note to the special committee's independent counsel rather than current management. That routing choice confirmed Mina had entered the new compliance channel. It did not make the sentence proof.
"Never formally submitted could mean drafts," Rhea said. "It could mean rejected intake. It could mean something else. We do not fill the gap."
The committee requested only an index of potentially relevant records and proposed a protective order defining testimony scope. Mina had not agreed to testify.
Outside the company, no announcement identified her.
Inside, Celeste remained the restricted CEO. Conrad remained chairman without control over safety records. Nathan remained Chief Legal Officer under the committee's preservation order.
The wedding date and hearing date remained the same.
Northstar's investigation remained open.
At five, Rhea's intake system showed that a certified package from Mina's counsel had entered overnight delivery. We did not know what it contained.
We knew only what Mina had authorized us to know.
She was safe.
She had chosen a lawyer and a compliance channel.
She had not chosen silence.
And she had not yet chosen to testify.