Chapter 3 - The Fourth Floor
By the time we reached Lenox Hill, I had convinced myself the incident had nothing to do with Daniel. Hospitals were chaotic places. Someone could have been intoxicated. A psychiatric patient could have become violent. A desperate family member could have lost control. There were a hundred explanations.
Then the elevator doors opened on the fourth floor.
And I saw the first security officer. He was facedown near the nurses' station. Motionless. A second guard was slumped against a wall ten feet away, blood streaking the side of his face.
The silence on the floor was heavy, punctuated only by the rhythmic beep of distant monitors and the hiss of an overhead vent.
My boots hit the linoleum with sharp, deliberate cracks. I drew my sidearm—standard procedure, concealed but accessible—and checked the corners. The nurses' station was deserted. Charts were scattered everywhere, coffee cups spilled across keyboards.
Something had swept through here like a localized storm.
“Colonel Moretti!”
I spun around, weapon leveled before my brain registered the voice.
It was Dr. Levin, emerging from a supply corridor down the hall, looking pale and frantic. He raised his hands instinctively, blinking against the muzzle of my pistol.
“Easy, Doctor,” I said, lowering the weapon an inch. “Where is my son?”
“Room 412. Down the hall to the left,” Dr. Levin breathed heavily, his chest heaving. “Colonel, thank God you're here. We didn't know who—they came up through the service stairwell—”
“Who came up?”
“Men in tactical gear. They didn't show badges. They bypassed the security desk and went straight for the restricted wing where Daniel was being moved for observation.”
My blood turned to ice. Observation. Not an allergy. Not a random asthma attack. Someone had engineered this.
May you like
“Is Daniel in Room 412?”
“No,” Dr. Levin said, his voice cracking. “We moved him. When the alarm sounded, the janitor—Maya—she grabbed his bed and pushed him into the old X-ray archive room at the end of the hall just seconds before those men reached his room.”
