Chapter 10
The note was still in my hand when Lena called.
“Don’t come back through the main entrance,” she said. Her voice was low and tight, the way it got when she was trying not to frighten me. “A man’s been asking about you and Noah. He showed the hospital security desk a picture of your memorial.”
Daniel’s expression changed. He reached for his coat.
“Who is he?”
“He called himself an investigator. He knew which hospital you were in.”
The archive suddenly seemed smaller. Dust floated in the beam of the desk lamp; somewhere below us, a metal door slammed. I folded Evelyn’s note and pushed it into my pocket beside the locket.
“Grant knows,” I said.
Daniel didn’t pretend otherwise. He put himself between me and the door.
“Then we don’t take the stairs.”
Lena met us at the hospital’s service entrance. She had arranged for Noah to be moved under the neonatal team’s care to a more secure room on another wing. A nurse walked beside his transport isolette, one hand on the rail. The monitor’s small green numbers steadied me more than any promise could have.
Noah was here. Breathing. Warm beneath his blankets.
I kept my palm against the clear side of the isolette as Lena guided us toward the service elevator.
“Security is checking the man’s credentials,” she murmured. “They haven’t confirmed he’s a police officer or anyone working for the hospital.”
“Grant sent him.”
“I think so.”
The elevator doors closed. Their dull reflection showed my face drawn and gray, Daniel’s shoulders tense behind me, and the tiny shape of my son surrounded by the steady pulse of the monitor.
At the lower level, the doors opened onto the garage.
Daniel stepped out first. He made it three paces before a man in a charcoal coat moved from behind a concrete pillar.
“Mr. Rowan?”
Daniel stopped. “Who wants to know?”
The man didn’t answer. His gaze slid past Daniel, toward the isolette.
Lena tightened her grip on the rail. “You can’t approach the baby.”
“I’m only trying to confirm—”
I hit the emergency alarm.
A shrill bell split the garage. Red lights began flashing overhead. The man flinched, and Daniel drove his shoulder into him, knocking him away from the path. Lena pushed the isolette toward the waiting transport van while the nurse stayed at Noah’s side.
“Go!” Daniel shouted.
I ran after them. The alarm swallowed the man’s voice, the echoes, even the frightened rush of my own breath. The van doors closed with Noah inside, and Lena pulled me up after him. Through the small rear window, I saw Daniel break free and sprint toward the driver’s side.
The man reached for him.
Then the van lurched forward.
I braced one hand on the isolette and the other against the metal wall. Noah slept on, his face no bigger than my palm, unaware that my whole world had just narrowed to the soft rise and fall beneath his blanket.
Daniel climbed in at the next stop, breathing hard.
“He’ll follow,” I said.
“Let him try.”
Lena had arranged for Noah to be received at another secured medical unit. The nurse stayed with him, checking the monitor as the van pulled into the storm-dark street. I kept looking at the window, expecting Grant’s black SUV to appear behind us.
It didn’t.
Then Tessa called.
I answered so quickly my fingers slipped on the screen.
“I’m at the hangar,” she said. Beneath her voice came the hollow ring of a large room, then a sharp clatter. “Grant’s here with company security. He says I stole company property.”
“Did you get the recorder?”
“I found the case. I haven’t opened it.”
A second voice cut through the phone—Grant’s, unmistakable even at a distance.
“Tessa, put it down.”
Daniel looked at me. The driver glanced at the mirror.
“Tessa, leave it,” I said. “Get out of there.”
“I can’t just—”
A heavy crash boomed through the phone. Tessa gasped. Something scraped hard across the floor.
“Tessa?”
The line went dead.
For one suspended second, the van’s engine was the only sound. Then Noah stirred, his little mouth tightening beneath the blanket.
Daniel reached for my shoulder.
“We’ll get him somewhere safe,” he said. “Then we’ll call for help.”
I looked down at my son, then at the dark screen in my hand. The same fear that had driven me through the pantry tunnel rose in me again—bright, physical, demanding that I run from whatever waited ahead.
But Tessa had stayed when she could have protected only herself.
“Tell the driver to turn toward the hangar.”
Daniel’s eyes held mine. “Mara—”
“I’m not leaving her alone with him.”
May you like
The van swung through the storm toward Northstar. I tucked Evelyn’s note deeper into my pocket and kept my hand against Noah’s isolette as the hangar lights appeared in the distance.
The phone stayed silent.
