Chương 8
“What?”
“Tell him no.”
“I met him this morning.”
“That explains why you still do it.”
Adrian walked away before the conversation could become louder.
Elena watched him disappear around the corner.
“He’ll come back when he remembers leaving would look emotional,” she said.
“You know him well.”
“I used to.”
Elena entered Lucia’s room slowly. When the child woke and saw her, she smiled for the first time.
“Aunt Ellie.”
Elena covered her mouth.
The smile lasted only a second before grief broke through. She sat beside the bed and let Lucia touch her face as if confirming she was real.
Adrian returned, as predicted, after seven minutes.
He stood outside the room while his daughter hugged his sister.
Maya watched him watch them.
Admiration, resentment, relief, and fear passed through him too quickly to separate.
Lucia remained in the hospital for two more nights. Her fever dropped. Her lungs cleared enough to avoid intensive respiratory support. She ate half a banana, three bites of toast, and the frosting from a cupcake a nurse brought despite hospital policy.
Maya tried to leave twice.
The first time, Lucia’s breathing accelerated until the monitor alarmed.
The second time, Maya made it as far as the elevator before Detective Ortiz stopped her.
“You have somewhere to go?” Ortiz asked.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“That phrase has ruined more afternoons than alcohol.”
“I’m not asking you for help.”
“I didn’t offer.”
Maya pressed the elevator button again.
Ortiz leaned against the wall.
“The burner phone received a message after police took it.”
Maya looked at her.
“Remote command,” Ortiz said. “Attempted wipe. It failed because the device was already isolated.”
“From Vince?”
“The originating number was spoofed.”
“Can you trace it?”
“Not instantly, regardless of what television has promised you.”
The elevator arrived. Neither entered.
Ortiz continued. “Kroll was found this morning at a motel near the airport.”
“Alive?”
“Yes. Someone broke two fingers on his right hand and left him zip-tied in a bathtub.”
Maya looked toward Lucia’s room.
“Vale?”
“He denies it.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe he has people who know how not to ask permission.”
“Did Kroll talk?”
“He asked for an attorney.”
The elevator doors closed.
Ortiz watched the numbers above them go dark.
“There’s another problem,” she said. “School security footage shows you near Lucia’s school three days before the abduction.”
Maya stared.
“That’s impossible.”
“The image is poor. Same height. Similar hair. Cream sweater.”
“I own one sweater.”
“Then you wear it often.”
“I was never at her school.”
“Where were you Tuesday afternoon?”
“Harbor View.”
“You said you were fired two months ago.”
“I went back to collect a final check.”
“Anyone see you?”
“The receptionist. Maybe.”
“Name?”
“Janice Patel.”
Ortiz wrote it down.
“You think I helped take her.”
“I think someone may want us to think you did.”
Maya felt the cold return beneath her skin.
“Why?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
The detective finally stepped into the next elevator.
Before the doors closed, she said, “Stay where people can find you.”
Maya went back to Lucia’s room because there was nowhere else she trusted.
That afternoon, a man wearing navy scrubs entered with a portable ultrasound machine. He was young, clean-shaven, and irritated in the hurried way hospital staff often were.
“Follow-up lung imaging,” he said.
Denise was not on duty. The new nurse checked the screen outside the room.
“I don’t see an order.”
“It was entered through respiratory.”
He rolled the machine closer.
Maya sat by the window, half asleep.
Lucia was coloring a butterfly with a red crayon because the pink one had broken. Adrian spoke quietly with Camille near the door. Elena had gone home to prepare a room.
The man in scrubs reached for Lucia’s blanket.
Maya smelled diesel.
It was faint beneath antiseptic and laundry detergent, but she knew it from the van lot, from the oily sleeve that had pressed against her face when Kroll grabbed her.
She looked at the man’s shoes.
Black work boots under medical scrubs.
“No,” she said.
He froze.
Adrian turned.
The man reached beneath the ultrasound machine.
Maya pulled Lucia off the bed, dragging IV tubing and monitor wires. An alarm screamed. Adrian crossed the room as the man produced a syringe, not a gun.
The syringe struck Adrian’s forearm.
He caught the man by the throat and drove him against the wall.
The ultrasound machine overturned.
Lucia cried out.
Maya crouched behind the bed with the child against her chest. Nurses shouted in the hallway. Security alarms began pulsing overhead.
Adrian pinned the intruder with one arm. The man clawed at his wrist.
“Adrian,” Camille said sharply. “Alive.”
For one second, Maya saw how easy it would be for him not to listen.
Lucia saw it too.
“Papa.”
Adrian released enough pressure for the man to breathe.
Security officers rushed in. They dragged the intruder away while he shouted that he was hospital staff. His badge came apart in an officer’s hand. The photograph had been glued over someone else’s identification.
Adrian looked at the syringe lodged shallowly in his forearm.
A nurse pulled it free using gloves and dropped it into an evidence container.
He did not seem to feel the puncture.
He looked at Maya holding Lucia.
Again, his controlled expression broke.
This time it was not fear for his daughter alone.
“You knew,” he said.
“I smelled him.”
“From the van?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You saved her again.”
Maya’s hands shook around Lucia.
“Stop saying it like I’m applying for a position.”
Adrian looked as if he might answer, then noticed Lucia crying.
He sat on the floor several feet away.
The same distance he had kept in the warehouse.
“No one’s taking you,” he told her.
Maya looked at the fake ultrasound machine. A maintenance sticker had been peeled from the back. Beneath it was the outline of a red bird logo.
May you like
“Detective,” Maya said.
Ortiz, arriving at the doorway, followed her gaze.
