Chương 3
“You looked at me,” Claire said.
Shaw’s eyes shifted toward her.
“You stood beside my bed.”
“I know.”
“You told me they were dead.”
“I know.”
Daniel’s voice came out rough. “Why?”
Shaw’s lips parted.
Nothing came.
Reed said, “Not here.”
Claire looked at him.
He pointed toward the corridor behind them.
“Backup is two minutes out. We are not turning this into an uncontrolled interview in a compromised archive.”
“They’re my children.”
“And I’m trying to get them back alive.”
The words were sharp enough to stop everyone.
Reed took a breath through his nose.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower.
“I know you want answers. Right now I need locations.”
Claire hated that he was right.
She also hated how much relief there was in letting someone else be right for thirty seconds.
Reed gestured toward Shaw.
“Elevator code.”
“Seven-seven-four-nine.”
“Does it require a badge?”
“After midnight.”
“Whose badge?”
“Executive clinical access.”
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
Shaw slowly reached toward her coat pocket.
Reed stopped her.
“I’ll get it.”
He removed the badge himself.
A distant set of footsteps entered the corridor, fast but controlled.
Two uniformed officers appeared first, then a hospital security supervisor Claire recognized from the lobby. He looked as though someone had awakened him by throwing water at his face. His tie was crooked and one shoelace was undone.
“What the hell is this?” he said.
Reed turned.
“You’re going to help me preserve every access log, camera feed, badge record, garage record, and elevator record from the last seventy-two hours.”
The supervisor stared at Shaw.
Then at the table.
His face changed when he saw the passports.
“I need hospital counsel.”
“Call them.”
“I can’t just release—”
“You can preserve. Nobody asked you to release anything yet.”
The man ran a hand over his hair.
“Jesus.”
One of the officers looked toward the tiny bassinets under white sheets beside the wall and then away again.
For half a second nobody spoke.
Rain struck the reinforced glass.
Somewhere in the hospital above them, a ventilation fan started with a low mechanical groan.
It was an absurdly ordinary sound.
Claire thought of the air purifier they had bought for the nursery.
Daniel had spent two hours reading reviews before purchasing it, then complained for a week that the blue indicator light was too bright.
She nearly doubled over.
Instead she pressed her thumb into the edge of the steel table until it hurt.
Reed assigned one officer to remain with Shaw.
Then he faced Claire and Daniel.
“You stay here.”
“No,” Claire said.
“Claire.”
“No.”
“Sublevel C may contain suspects.”
“My daughters may be there.”
“That is exactly why you stay here.”
Daniel took one step closer to Reed. “You think either of us is going to sit in this room?”
“Yes.”
Daniel stared at him.
Reed stared back.
The detective was not physically imposing in the dramatic way television detectives tended to be. He was fifty-one, broad through the shoulders, gray at the temples, and carried a slight stiffness in his left knee. He looked like a man who bought the same brand of shoes repeatedly because he disliked spending time choosing shoes.
He also looked completely immovable.
“Five minutes,” Reed said. “Give me five minutes to clear the lower corridor. If it’s safe and I need you for identification, I’ll bring you.”
Claire opened her mouth.
Daniel squeezed her wrist.
“Five,” he said.
Reed nodded once.
He and two officers entered the elevator with Shaw’s badge.
The steel doors closed.
Claire stood staring at her reflection in them.
Her face looked gray beneath fluorescent light.
Daniel moved beside her.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t ask what for.
There were too many possibilities.
She rubbed her aching palm.
“I hit her.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never hit anyone.”
“I know.”
“I hit a doctor.”
“You hit the doctor who signed death certificates for our living children.”
Claire looked at him.
“That sounded rehearsed.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You’re getting very good at making terrible things sound reasonable.”
His face tightened.
There it was.
The old argument waiting inside a new emergency.
She regretted the sentence immediately.
Daniel turned away.
The hospital security supervisor was speaking rapidly into his phone near the corridor entrance. The officer guarding Shaw’s abandoned position by the table watched both Morgans without pretending not to.
Claire lowered her voice.
“I’m sorry.”
Daniel gave a little shrug.
It was not forgiveness.
It was not refusal either.
Eleven months had taught them to accept incomplete things.
The elevator indicator changed.
C.
Then nothing.
Claire counted to sixty.
She counted again.
At one hundred fourteen, the radio on the officer’s shoulder crackled.
“Archive, Reed.”
The officer answered.
“Go.”
“Bring Mr. and Mrs. Morgan down. Escort only.”
Claire was moving before the officer finished repeating it.
The elevator opened onto a corridor colder than the archive.
Concrete walls. Red emergency strips. Rusted hooks from a previous generation of medical transport equipment. Steel cages full of old ventilator parts. A line of abandoned neonatal warming units stood along one wall beneath plastic covers.
The air smelled faintly of bleach.
Reed waited beside an open door twenty yards down.
“There’s no immediate threat,” he said. “Don’t touch anything.”
Claire passed him.
The room beyond had once been a private recovery suite.
Somebody had made it livable recently.
Two portable cribs.
A changing pad.
A folding table with sealed jars of toddler food.
A pink sippy cup in the sink.
Two child-sized coats hung from adhesive hooks near the door.
Claire stopped so abruptly Daniel bumped into her shoulder.
One coat was yellow.
One green.
Like the photograph.
The floor tilted.
Daniel whispered, “Oh my God.”
Claire walked farther in.
Reed did not stop her until she reached the cribs.
Both were empty.
The fitted sheets were wrinkled.
One held a strand of dark hair.
The other held a stuffed elephant with one ear folded under its body.
Claire reached.
May you like
Reed caught her wrist gently.
“I need them to process it first.”
