Chapter 3 - The Man Behind the Hospital Glass
Gabriel moved before the door opened completely.
He pulled Chalice behind the stone wall while Luca covered the entrance.
“Stay down.”
“I’m tired of being told that.”
“Tonight, make an exception.”
The door opened.
The younger guard stepped inside.
His name, Chalice learned, was Evan Mercer.
He was alone.
His gun remained holstered.
Gabriel emerged.
“How did you find us?”
Mercer stopped.
“Your car.”
“Wrong answer.”
Gabriel had changed vehicles twice.
Mercer knew it.
Gabriel knew he knew it.
The guard slowly raised his hands.
“Someone put a tracker on Nurse Imhof.”
Chalice froze.
“Where?”
Mercer pointed at her shoe.
Inside the heel they found a device smaller than a fingernail.
Gabriel crushed it.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why follow the signal?”
“Because someone else was following it too.”
A gunshot cracked through the crypt.
Stone exploded beside Gabriel.
Luca fired back.
Mercer dragged Chalice down.
Another shot.
Then silence.
The attacker disappeared.
Gabriel stared at Mercer.
“You just saved her.”
Mercer’s answer was quiet.
“That’s my job.”
“No. Your job was guarding the house.”
Mercer looked toward Chalice.
“Not anymore.”
Back at Gabriel’s compound, the flash drive revealed hospital surveillance footage.
Most files had been erased.
One remained.
It showed the neonatal unit on the morning Douglas was declared dead.
Chalice appeared on-screen.
Then the man with the syringe.
Then someone else.
A man standing behind the observation glass.
Gabriel leaned toward the monitor.
“No.”
Chalice looked at him.
“You know him?”
Gabriel did not answer.
The man turned toward the camera.
Older.
Silver hair.
Expensive coat.
A familiar face to Gabriel.
“Victor Holmes,” Gabriel whispered.
“Who?”
“My uncle.”
Victor had raised Gabriel and Antonio after their father died.
He had attended Antonio’s wedding.
He had carried Antonio’s coffin.
He had stood beside Gabriel when they buried Isabella.
And according to the footage, Victor had been watching Douglas’s attempted murder.
Gabriel replayed the video.
Chalice pointed.
“Wait.”
Victor was not watching the nursery.
He was watching someone reflected in the glass.
Gabriel enlarged the image.
The reflection revealed a woman.
Hospital administrator.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw.
Chalice knew her.
“She signed Douglas’s death certificate.”
Gabriel turned.
“You said someone altered the record.”
“She signed the physical certificate.”
Gabriel reached for his phone.
Chalice stopped him.
“If Victor wanted Douglas dead, why leave footage?”
“He didn’t.”
“Then somebody preserved it.”
Mercer entered.
“We found the source of the tracker.”
“Who?”
Mercer placed a hospital ID badge on the desk.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw.
Gabriel stared.
“She tracked Chalice?”
Mercer shook his head.
“The badge was planted in her apartment too.”
Chalice felt sick.
Someone was constructing evidence.
Not merely hunting her.
Framing her.
Gabriel plugged Isabella’s key into a small lockbox recovered with the flash drive.
Inside was another photograph.
Antonio.
Victor.
Evelyn Shaw.
And Chalice’s mother.
Gabriel turned it over.
One sentence.
THE FOUR OF US MADE A PROMISE.
Chalice stared at her mother’s face.
Then her phone rang.
The number had been disconnected for eleven years.
It had belonged to her mother.
She answered.
No greeting came.
Only a woman breathing.
Then a whisper.
“Chalice, your mother didn’t die in that accident.”
The line went dead.
May you like
A second later, someone knocked on Gabriel’s locked study door.
And a woman outside said Chalice’s childhood nickname.
