Chapter 6 - LOCKDOWN ON THE FIFTH FLOORDaniel survived the gunshot.
The bullet had passed through his side without striking a major organ. Surgeons stopped the bleeding, and doctors expected a full recovery.
Caleb should have felt relief.
Instead, he stood inside a locked elevator watching the numbers rise toward the fifth floor of St. Anne’s Hospital.
Rosie was on that floor.
So was someone using Evelyn’s stolen access card.
Detective Ortiz stood beside Caleb with her weapon drawn. Bethany remained behind them, still wearing her silver gala dress beneath a borrowed coat.
“You stay in the elevator,” Ortiz told her.
“That keycard came from my mother’s purse.”
“And that makes you a witness, not an officer.”
The elevator stopped at the fourth floor.
The lights went out.
Emergency power turned them red.
Ortiz pressed the fifth-floor button again.
Nothing happened.
Someone had disabled the system.
Caleb forced his fingers between the elevator doors.
“Help me.”
Ortiz joined him.
Together, they pulled the inner doors apart. The elevator had stopped several feet below the fourth-floor landing.
Caleb climbed through first.
Ortiz followed.
Bethany tried to come after them.
“Stay there,” Caleb ordered.
“For once, stop treating me like the enemy.”
“You hurt my child.”
Bethany flinched.
Caleb turned away before anger could slow him.
The stairwell door had been chained from the other side. Ortiz fired one shot into the chain’s lock, then kicked the door open.
They climbed toward the fifth floor.
A hospital alarm began sounding.
Over the speakers, a calm recorded voice announced a security lockdown.
They reached Rosie’s corridor.
The nurses’ station was empty.
Medical carts stood abandoned beside open doors. Patients had been moved into rooms.
Caleb heard a child crying somewhere ahead.
“Rosie!”
Ortiz caught his arm. “Don’t run into an ambush.”
A man in an orderly’s uniform stepped from a supply room.
He wore a surgical mask and carried a clipboard.
“Sir, you need to shelter in place.”
Ortiz raised her badge. “Police. Show me your hands.”
The man dropped the clipboard.
A compact pistol slid from beneath it.
Ortiz pushed Caleb behind a cart as the man fired.
The shot struck the wall.
Ortiz returned fire, forcing the attacker into a patient room.
Caleb moved toward Rosie’s door.
The attacker reappeared from a second exit.
He grabbed Caleb and drove him through a rolling tray table.
Metal instruments scattered across the floor.
Caleb caught the man’s gun wrist before the weapon could turn toward him.
They crashed into the wall, fighting for control.
The attacker slammed Caleb’s hand against a doorframe until his grip loosened.
The pistol turned.
Caleb trapped the slide with his palm and shoved the barrel away as the gun fired.
The blast deafened him.
He drove his forehead into the attacker’s nose, then hooked one leg behind the man’s knee.
Both men fell.
The pistol slid beneath a hospital bed.
The attacker pulled a syringe from his pocket.
Caleb caught his arm before the needle reached his neck.
The man pressed harder.
Caleb’s muscles shook.
Then a fire extinguisher struck the attacker’s shoulder.
Bethany stood behind them.
She swung again.
The attacker rolled away and kicked her legs from beneath her. Bethany hit the floor.
He reached for the pistol.
Caleb grabbed the electrical cord of a bedside monitor and looped it around the attacker’s forearm. He pulled backward, trapping the man’s arm against the bedframe.
Ortiz rushed in and pressed her weapon against the attacker’s back.
“Stop moving.”
The man froze.
Two hospital security officers arrived seconds later.
Caleb left them to secure the attacker and ran to Rosie’s room.
He opened the door.
Rosie sat beneath a blanket with a child advocate beside her. An officer guarded the window.
She reached toward him.
“Daddy!”
Caleb lifted her from the bed.
She was warm, dry, and unharmed.
He held her so tightly that the child advocate gently touched his arm.
“She’s okay.”
Caleb closed his eyes.
Rosie whispered, “You came back.”
“Every time.”
Behind him, Bethany stood in the doorway with tears on her face.
Rosie saw her and tightened both arms around Caleb’s neck.
Bethany stopped.
The fear in Rosie’s eyes struck her harder than the fire extinguisher had struck the gunman.
“I’m sorry,” Bethany said.
Caleb turned away.
The attacker carried no identification. His fingerprints had been chemically damaged, and the hospital badge belonged to an orderly who had been found unconscious in a parking structure.
Detective Ortiz searched the man’s clothing.
Inside his shoe, she found a folded receipt from a private airfield.
A flight to Canada was scheduled before dawn under the name Eleanor Vale.
“Evelyn’s middle name is Eleanor,” Bethany said.
Ortiz sent officers to the airfield.
Caleb carried Rosie to Daniel’s recovery room on the sixth floor. Daniel was awake but pale.
Rosie climbed carefully beside him.
“Uncle Daniel got an owie?”
“A pretty stupid one,” Daniel said.
She touched his hand.
Bethany remained in the hallway.
Caleb joined her and closed the door behind him.
“You helped me,” he said. “That doesn’t erase what you did.”
“I know.”
“Why did Mom have the hospital keycard?”
Bethany stared through the window at Daniel and Rosie.
“Mom always had access to everything. Offices, bank accounts, medical records. Dad called it preparation.”
“For what?”
“For controlling us.”
Caleb waited.
Bethany rubbed her bruised wrist.
“When Hannah was alive, she asked me whether Mom had ever paid someone to repair the brakes on her car.”
Caleb’s breath stopped.
“What did you tell her?”
“I said no.”
“Was that true?”
Bethany shook her head.
“Two days before Hannah’s accident, Mom made me take her car to a private mechanic. She said the brakes were squeaking.”
“Which mechanic?”
“I never met him. I left the car in an underground lot. A man collected the keys.”
Caleb stepped closer.
“You knew this and said nothing?”
“I didn’t know Hannah would die.”
“After she died?”
Bethany’s voice broke. “Mom told me the mechanic had found nothing wrong. Then she paid off my credit cards and bought me the condo.”
Caleb pressed both hands against the wall.
He wanted to scream.
He thought of Hannah driving through the rain, calling him moments before the crash. She had said the brake pedal felt wrong.
He had told her to pull over.
The call had ended with metal tearing apart.
“Who was the man?” Caleb asked.
“I only saw him once.”
Bethany looked toward the secured attacker at the far end of the hall.
“It was him.”
Caleb turned.
The man who had tried to reach Rosie was the same man who had taken Hannah’s car before her fatal crash.
Ortiz questioned him for hours.
He gave no name and requested an attorney.
The private airfield yielded another surprise. Officers found Gideon Price’s plane prepared for departure, but neither Price nor Evelyn arrived.
Inside the plane were two passports, cash, and a laptop.
Daniel accessed the laptop from his hospital bed.
Most files were encrypted.
One video was not.
It showed Thomas Mercer standing in the Rosebridge barn beside Gideon Price.
Thomas held a sample report from the contaminated eastern field.
“We can’t let Hannah take this to the state,” Thomas said.
Price asked, “What does Evelyn want done?”
Thomas looked directly toward the camera.
“She wants the brakes to fail before Hannah reaches the laboratory.”
The recording ended.
Bethany sank into a chair.
Caleb stared at the black screen.
His father had known.
His mother had ordered it.
Gideon Price had arranged it.
Hannah’s death had never been an accident.
Detective Ortiz placed a hand on Caleb’s shoulder.
“We’ll arrest Thomas for conspiracy. We’ll find Evelyn and Price.”
Caleb looked through the hospital window at Rosie.
“No,” he said. “They’ll come to us.”
Daniel frowned. “Why?”
Caleb held up the keycard found in Evelyn’s purse.
A handwritten number appeared on the back.
Not a hospital code.
A storage unit address.
Bethany recognized it.
“Mom keeps her emergency files there.”
Ortiz took the card.
“We’ll obtain a warrant.”
Bethany shook her head. “By then, she’ll empty it.”
Caleb looked at his sister.
“You know how to get inside?”
“I know more than that.”
May you like
Bethany met his eyes.
“I know where Mom goes when she needs someone to disappear.”
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