Chapter 7 - Someone Inside the Hospital
Claire stared at the dead screen.
“This morning.”
Adrian said nothing.
“This morning, Adrian.”
“I heard him.”
“My father is alive.”
“We don't know that.”
“He said—”
“Keene lies.”
Claire spun toward him.
“Don't take this away from me.”
Adrian's expression softened.
“I'm trying to stop him from using hope as a weapon.”
“It already is.”
Marco recovered data from the computer.
One file contained coordinates.
Upstate New York.
Another contained hospital employee records.
Claire recognized several names.
Then one shocked her.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw.
Her nursing mentor.
The woman who had hired Claire.
The woman who encouraged her to volunteer for Adrian.
“She put me in that room.”
Adrian looked at Claire.
“Exactly.”
They returned to Manhattan secretly.
Evelyn was still working.
Claire found her inside an empty operating room.
Evelyn saw Adrian and went pale.
“I can explain.”
“Start,” Claire said.
Evelyn had worked for a classified rehabilitation program twenty years earlier.
Daniel Donovan had been one of its prisoners.
Not patients.
Prisoners.
“He was alive?” Claire whispered.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Years.”
Claire almost collapsed.
Adrian gripped his wheelchair.
“Why didn't you tell anyone?”
“They threatened my family.”
“You watched him suffer.”
Evelyn cried.
“Yes.”
Claire wanted to hate her.
But she needed answers.
“Where is he?”
“I don't know.”
“Keene said he spoke to him.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“Then Daniel escaped.”
Adrian froze.
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
Claire's world tilted again.
Her father had been free.
Why hadn't he come home?
Evelyn answered before she asked.
“Because he believed returning would get you killed.”
Claire covered her face.
Adrian looked away.
Daniel had made the same choice Adrian would have made.
Disappear to protect the person you loved.
Evelyn gave them a storage key.
“Daniel left this for Ghost.”
The locker contained a hard drive.
Adrian connected it.
Daniel appeared on video.
Older.
Scarred.
Alive.
Claire sobbed.
“Claire,” Daniel said to the camera, “if you're watching this, I'm sorry.”
She touched the screen.
Daniel explained everything.
Keene had been selling classified weapons technology.
Daniel discovered it.
Adrian's team became expendable.
Daniel survived and was held because Keene needed passwords only he knew.
Eventually Daniel escaped.
But he learned Claire was under surveillance.
So he remained dead.
Then Daniel said something unexpected.
“Ghost, your accident wasn't an accident.”
Adrian leaned closer.
“The device in your spine contains the final encryption key.”
Claire looked at him.
Daniel continued.
“Keene needs you alive until he gets it.”
The video ended.
Adrian understood.
His disability had been engineered.
His suffering planned.
Someone had destroyed his ability to walk simply to hide a key inside his body.
Then the hospital lights flickered.
Claire looked toward the hallway.
Every door locked simultaneously.
The intercom crackled.
Thomas Keene's voice filled the hospital.
“Ghost, it's time to finish what we started.”
May you like
Adrian looked toward Claire.
Then screaming began downstairs.
