Chapter 5 - Whispers in Sterile Halls
“Suspect is on foot! Heading down stairwell B!” Agent Ross yelled into his radio, pulling his sidearm as he vaulted over the fallen podium.
The boardroom dissolved into absolute bedlam. Board members were shouting, scrambling for their phones, while corporate attorneys began throwing papers into briefcases like men fleeing a sinking battleship.
I didn't run. I stayed seated in the chairman’s chair.
Arthur leaned down beside me. “Miller’s team has every exterior exit covered, Evelyn. Hale cannot leave this building without walking into our net.”
“He knows this building better than your men do, Arthur,” I said quietly, my instincts screaming that a man as narcissistic and desperate as Marcus wouldn't simply flee the city. Men like Marcus don't run until they have destroyed the thing that brought them down.
And right now, that thing was Taylor.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the secure line to Saint Mary’s Hospital.
The call connected on the second ring. “Chen here.”
“Dr. Chen, where is Taylor?” I demanded, standing up and heading toward the private executive elevator.
“She’s in the high-dependency delivery suite, Room 302, protected by three of Miller’s guards,” Dr. Chen reported. “Her contractions have started. The stress from the morning has triggered active labor. She is four centimeters dilated. Her blood pressure has spiked again.”
“Lock down that floor,” I ordered. “Marcus just fled the boardroom. He knows his life is over. When a man loses everything, he goes after the source of his ruin.”
“Nobody enters this floor without my direct authorization,” Dr. Chen promised. “Hurry, Evelyn.”
As Arthur and I descended in the private elevator, my phone chimed with an incoming call from a blocked number.
I answered.
“You think you’ve won, Evelyn?” Marcus’s voice sounded ragged, panting, accompanied by the echo of hollow concrete stairs. He was running down the emergency maintenance shafts. “You think taking my money and my license makes you clever? That child is *mine*. She carries my blood. Taylor belongs to me!”
“You don't own anything anymore, Marcus,” I said coldly. “Not this hospital, not my daughter, and certainly not that unborn baby. You are a fugitive with five federal warrants.”
“I’m the doctor who delivers her!” he screamed, his voice breaking into hysterical madness. “I was the one who was supposed to hold her first! You took everything from me! I’m going to make sure Taylor pays for every single dime you just stole!”
The line went dead.
I looked at Arthur. “He’s not heading for the garage. He’s heading for the pediatric transfer tunnel.”
Greenfield Health and Saint Mary’s were separated by two city blocks, but beneath the pavement ran a historic, subterranean medical transport tunnel built decades ago to move incubators and sterile supplies between the two facilities. Marcus had personally overseen the modernization of that tunnel three years ago.
“Arthur, tell Miller to seal the underground transfer tunnel at Saint Mary’s immediately!”
“On it!” Arthur barked into his radio.
When the elevator reached the ground floor, I stepped out into the hospital lobby. Outside, the world was alive with flashing red and blue lights. News vans had already begun assembling outside the glass perimeter; the financial press had caught wind of the sovereign default, and now local news was picking up reports of the FBI raid on Greenfield’s executive suite.
Reporters shoved microphones against the exterior glass.
I ignored them all, walking briskly toward the underground maintenance connector that led to the tunnel.
Miller met me at the reinforced steel fire door, his weapon drawn. “Mrs. Cross, the tunnel security doors have been forced. Hale used an emergency master override key from the maintenance console. He’s already inside the passage.”
“Where does it exit?” I asked.
“Directly into the sub-basement of Saint Mary’s. Right beneath the maternity ward.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. The cold calculation that had guided me all morning gave way to the primal, terrifying rage of a mother whose child is in immediate, mortal danger.
“Give me a weapon, Miller,” I said.
Miller stared at me for half a second, recognized the unyielding fury in my eyes, and without a word, drew a compact semi-automatic pistol from his shoulder holster, chambered a round, and placed it firmly in my hand.
“Follow me,” Miller commanded, leading his two armed tactical officers into the dimly lit, humid concrete corridor beneath the city.
The tunnel was damp, lined with massive steam pipes that hissed into the darkness. The overhead fluorescents flickered erratically.
Fifty yards ahead, the emergency exit door leading up into Saint Mary’s swung loosely on its hinges, its electronic lock mangled by a heavy crowbar.
May you like
Marcus was already inside the building.
***