Chapter 9 — The Empty Hospital Bed

Lena reached the hospital before the police.

Walter’s room was empty.

His wheelchair remained beside the bed.

One wheel was still turning.

A nurse stood in the hallway crying.

“She had identification,” the nurse said. “She said she was transferring him for imaging.”

“What did she look like?” Priya asked.

“Dark hair. Mid-forties. Blue scrubs.”

Security footage showed the fake nurse pushing Walter through a restricted elevator.

A second camera captured her loading him into an ambulance.

The ambulance belonged to a private transport company owned by North Coast Consulting.

Lena stared at the frozen image of Walter.

He looked awake.

Terrified.

But awake.

“Can we track the ambulance?” she asked.

“The GPS was disabled,” Priya said.

Richard called every police contact he trusted.

Roadblocks were established.

Nothing.

Then Lena remembered Walter’s final words before collapsing.

Blue folder.

Room 714.

He had known the evidence was there.

Maybe he had prepared for something else.

She searched Walter’s wheelchair.

Under the joystick was a small plastic panel.

Inside it, she found a cheap prepaid phone.

There was only one saved contact.

MALCOLM.

Lena pressed call.

A phone began ringing inside Walter’s abandoned overnight bag.

Priya opened it.

The ringing came from the lining.

She cut through the fabric and found a second device—a tracking receiver.

A blinking dot moved north on the screen.

Walter had placed a tracker somewhere on himself.

“He knew they might take him,” Lena whispered.

The signal led toward an abandoned rehabilitation center forty miles outside Boston.

Police surrounded the property.

Lena stayed inside Richard’s car, exactly as she had been ordered.

For almost four minutes.

Then she saw smoke rising from a rear window.

She got out.

“Lena!” Richard shouted.

She ran toward the building.

Inside, alarms were sounding.

Police officers moved through dark corridors.

Lena followed Walter’s voice.

“Help!”

She found him strapped to a medical chair in a treatment room.

Dr. Simon Rusk stood beside him with a syringe.

Celeste Caldwell stood near the door.

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“You should have stayed in your uniform,” Celeste told Lena.

Then Dr. Rusk pressed the syringe against Walter’s neck.