Chapter 2 - THE EMPTY HOSPITAL ROOM
I do not remember leaving my apartment.
I remember Alexander’s coat around my shoulders.
I remember broken glass beneath my bare feet.
I remember one of his men giving me shoes that were two sizes too large.
Then I was inside a black SUV moving through Boston at a speed that made every traffic light look like a warning.
Rain streaked across the windows.
Alexander sat beside me, speaking into two phones at once.
“Lock down every private airfield within sixty miles.”
He listened.
“No, do not involve local dispatch yet. Hale has people inside the system.”
He ended one call and answered another.
“Check every transfer order signed by Mercer in the last twelve months. Cancer patients, especially uninsured women between forty and sixty-five.”
I stared at him.
“How many people has this happened to?”
He looked toward me.
“We don’t know.”
“That means many.”
“It means we don’t know.”
I hated how controlled he sounded.
I hated that I needed his control.
“My mother cannot miss her medication,” I said. “She had chemotherapy yesterday. She’s weak. She gets confused when her fever rises.”
“I sent her medical records to a physician I trust.”
“You have her medical records?”
His pause lasted half a second.
“Yes.”
“Of course you do.”
“Lena—”
“You have been investigating me for five months. Why would there be anything about my life you haven’t taken?”
His mouth tightened.
“I did not take anything.”
“You invaded everything.”
“I was trying to determine whether you were safe.”
“You could have asked.”
“No,” he said. “I could not.”
“Why?”
“Because the last person who agreed to speak with me about Harbor Relief was found dead two days later.”
The anger left my body so quickly it made me dizzy.
“Who?”
“A nurse named Angela Price. She worked in oncology intake at Saint Catherine’s. She noticed patients being referred to the same lenders and the same private treatment centers. She contacted my office.”
“What happened?”
“Her car went through a barrier on the Tobin Bridge.”
I looked out the rain-covered window.
My father had also died in a car accident.
I could not make the thought go away.
“Did Hale kill her?”
“I believe so.”
“And my father?”
Alexander did not answer.
I turned toward him.
“You think my father was murdered.”
“I think the circumstances of his death deserve to be examined again.”
“He fell asleep behind the wheel.”
“That is what the report says.”
“My mother said he had been working late.”
“His car struck a concrete support at 1:10 in the afternoon.”
The detail cut through me.
“My mother must have remembered wrong.”
“Possibly.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
I pressed both hands to my face.
My mother had spent seventeen years speaking about my father’s death as if it were a wound she had learned not to touch.
She kept his photograph.
His watch.
His blue vase.
But she never talked about his work.
Whenever I asked, she said he had been good with numbers and terrible at taking vacations.
That was all.
The SUV turned sharply.
Alexander put a hand against the seat in front of me to keep me from being thrown sideways.
“We’re three minutes from the hospital,” he said.
“Will she be there?”
“No.”
The certainty hurt.
“Then why are we going?”
“To find out who took her.”
Massachusetts General was quieter at three in the morning than I had ever seen it.
The bright hallways looked wrong without daytime noise. Nurses moved between rooms with tired faces. A security guard stood beside the elevators, speaking to two of Alexander’s men.
Nobody stopped us.
That bothered me almost as much as everything else.
“How do they know you?” I asked.
“They know Dominic.”
The scarred man walking ahead of us glanced back.
“Dominic?”
“My head of security.”
Dominic nodded once.
He looked to be in his early forties, with dark hair going gray at the temples and the stillness of a soldier who had never fully left the battlefield.
We reached my mother’s room.
The door stood open.
Her bed had been stripped.
The water cup I had filled before leaving for work sat untouched on the windowsill.
Her pale green scarf was gone.
So was the small framed photograph of us at Cape Cod.
I walked into the room and placed my hand on the mattress.
Still warm.
“She was here.”
Alexander stayed near the door.
I found a nurse at the station.
“Where is Evelyn Hart?”
The young woman’s face changed.
“I’m sorry, family members were supposed to be notified.”
“I am her family.”
She turned toward the computer.
“The order says she was transferred to Franklin Recovery Center.”
“Where is that?”
The nurse typed.
Her eyebrows pulled together.
“I’m not finding an address.”
“Who picked her up?”
“A private medical transport company.”
“Which one?”
She scrolled.
“New England Patient Services.”
Dominic pulled out his phone.
I leaned over the desk.
“What time?”
“Two forty-eight.”
“Who authorized it?”
“Dr. Mercer.”
“Was he here?”
The nurse looked uncomfortable.
“I did not see him.”
“Then how did he sign it?”
“The order was submitted electronically.”
Alexander stepped forward.
“Show me the credential log.”
The nurse blinked. “I can’t do that.”
“You can show hospital security.”
A man in a navy suit approached from the elevators.
“Mr. Rossi.”
The nurse went pale.
The man introduced himself as the night administrator, then took us into a small office and pulled up the access records.
Dr. Mercer’s credentials had been used at 2:31.
From a terminal inside the hospital.
The terminal belonged to oncology intake.
Security footage showed a man wearing scrubs, a cap, and a surgical mask entering the office. His face was hidden.
He stayed for four minutes.
Then he left pushing an empty wheelchair.
“Track him backward,” Alexander said.
The administrator rewound the footage.
The disguised man had entered through a loading entrance at 2:19.
A white medical transport van waited outside.
The license plate was partially hidden by mud.
Dominic enlarged the image.
“Massachusetts commercial plate. Last three digits are eight-one-six.”
Alexander’s phone rang.
He answered.
His eyes met mine while he listened.
“Where?”
He ended the call.
“One of my teams found a van matching the description.”
“Where is my mother?”
“The van is abandoned near Chelsea Creek.”
The hallway seemed to sway.
“Was anyone inside?”
“No.”
I grabbed the edge of the desk.
Alexander reached for me, but I stepped away.
“Do not tell me to stay calm.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Then tell me what you are going to do.”
“We’re going to the van.”
The administrator looked alarmed. “Police should be notified.”
Alexander turned toward him.
“Your hospital allowed a cancer patient to be removed using stolen credentials. Until I know who inside this building helped them, no one here makes another call.”
The man started to object.
Alexander leaned closer.
“My attorneys will contact your board at sunrise. Before then, I suggest you discover how many other patients have disappeared from your care.”
The drive to Chelsea took less than ten minutes.
The van sat beneath an overpass near the water.
Rain hammered the roof.
Two dark vehicles blocked the road. Alexander’s men surrounded the van.
Dominic opened the rear doors.
The medical bed inside was empty.
But there was blood on one of the straps.
I made a sound I did not recognize.
Alexander caught me before I reached the van.
“That may not be hers.”
“It is blood.”
“It may be from an IV.”
“She was sick.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I pushed against his chest.
“You don’t know what it is like to sit beside someone you love and count every breath because you are afraid one of them will be the last. You don’t know what it is like to watch a doctor look at a chart instead of your mother’s face. You don’t know what it is like to beg strangers for money because the person who raised you is dying.”
His hands closed gently around my wrists.
“My sister died of leukemia when she was twenty-two.”
I stopped moving.
Rain drummed against the metal overpass.
Alexander released me.
“She was accepted into a private trial,” he said. “Our family paid everything they asked. They told us the treatment was working.”
“What happened?”
“The medicine they gave her was not the medicine listed in the trial records.”
My breath caught.
“It had been diluted and replaced.”
“By who?”
“North Atlantic Medical Holdings supplied the treatment.”
My father’s company.
“I don’t understand.”
“North Atlantic owned laboratories, billing firms, private clinics, and charitable lending programs. Harbor Relief is one of those programs.”
“And Victor Hale?”
“He controls them now.”
“What did your sister have to do with my father?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You watched me for five months without knowing?”
“I knew your father had investigated missing money from the same subsidiary that supplied my sister’s treatment. Three weeks after he requested an internal audit, he died.”
My knees weakened.
Alexander steadied me.
“Why didn’t you tell me before tonight?”
“Because I had no proof.”
“And now?”
He held up the brass key.
“Now we have this.”
A shout came from inside the van.
Dominic had removed a panel beneath the floor.
He pulled out a disposable phone.
The screen was still lit.
One outgoing call.
Made eleven minutes earlier.
Alexander read the number.
“I know this exchange.”
“Where?”
“Cambridge.”
Dominic looked at him.
“The old Hawthorne Clinic?”
Alexander nodded.
“Move.”
The Hawthorne Clinic had closed eight years earlier.
Its brick building stood at the end of a narrow industrial road, surrounded by dead trees and chain-link fencing. The windows were covered. A faded sign still promised advanced care with dignity.
There were no lights outside.
But one glowed on the second floor.
Alexander told me to stay in the SUV.
I refused.
“You are not going inside,” he said.
“My mother is in there.”
“If Hale’s men are waiting, you will become leverage.”
“I already am leverage.”
His eyes flashed.
“That does not mean I hand you to them.”
I stepped close enough to feel the heat of his body despite the rain.
“You watched me for five months because you believed I might lead you to the truth. I just did. You do not get to lock me in a car now.”
Dominic looked away, hiding what might have been approval.
Alexander stared at me for a long moment.
Then he took a small device from his pocket and clipped it beneath the collar of my T-shirt.
“What is that?”
“A tracker and microphone.”
“I thought you already knew where I was all the time.”
His expression almost became a smile.
Almost.
“Stay behind me.”
We entered through a side door.
The clinic smelled of dust, bleach, and old medicine.
Our footsteps echoed down the hallway.
Peeling murals of smiling children covered the walls.
At the end of the corridor, a wheelchair sat on its side.
My mother’s green scarf lay beside it.
I ran forward.
Alexander caught my arm.
“Wait.”
A thin wire stretched across the hallway at ankle height.
Dominic cut it.
A glass bottle filled with chemicals hung above the doorway beyond it.
A trap.
They were not only hiding my mother.
They were expecting us.
We climbed the stairs.
The light came from a former examination room.
I heard a machine beeping.
Then my mother’s voice.
Weak.
Frightened.
“Lena?”
I rushed through the doorway.
She lay on a narrow medical bed with an IV in her arm. Her skin looked gray beneath the fluorescent light. A man wearing a doctor’s coat stood beside her.
Dr. Mercer.
He held a syringe.
“Step away from her,” Alexander said.
Mercer froze.
His hand shook.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand enough.”
Mercer’s eyes darted toward the hallway.
“They made me do it.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
Alexander moved closer.
Mercer raised the syringe toward my mother’s IV line.
“One more step and I push this.”
I stopped breathing.
“What is in it?” I asked.
Mercer looked at me.
“Enough potassium to stop her heart.”
My mother’s eyes filled with tears.
“Lena, don’t.”
Alexander’s voice remained calm.
“If you inject her, you die before the plunger reaches the bottom.”
Mercer laughed once.
It sounded broken.
“I’m dead anyway.”
“No,” I said. “You’re afraid.”
He looked at me.
“You introduced me to Harbor Relief. You knew what they were.”
“I was trying to help patients.”
“You sold them.”
His face crumpled.
“They started with referrals. Then they wanted records. Social Security numbers. Insurance information. They created accounts, treatments, claims. By the time I understood, they had everything.”
“You transferred my mother.”
“Hale said he only wanted to talk to her.”
“You brought poison.”
“I brought what he told me to bring.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Mercer turned his head.
Alexander moved.
He struck Mercer’s wrist.
The syringe flew across the room.
Dominic pulled my mother’s bed away while another man pinned Mercer against the wall.
I reached my mother.
She clutched my hand with surprising strength.
“You came,” she whispered.
“I’ll always come.”
Then gunfire erupted downstairs.
Alexander turned toward the door.
“Hale’s cleanup team,” Dominic said.
The lights went out.
My mother screamed.
Emergency lights flickered red along the walls.
Alexander placed a gun in Dominic’s hand and crouched beside me.
“There is a service stairwell behind this room.”
“How do you know?”
“My sister was treated here.”
He pulled a cabinet away from the wall.
A narrow door appeared behind it.
The first shot hit the examination-room door.
Wood splintered inward.
Alexander lifted my mother from the bed as if she weighed nothing.
I held the IV bag above her while Dominic opened the hidden stairwell.
We descended into darkness.
Above us, men shouted.
Below us, another door slammed.
Someone was already waiting at the bottom.
Alexander handed my mother to Dominic.
Then he stepped in front of us.
A flashlight beam cut through the stairwell.
A man appeared below, raising a weapon.
Before he could fire, Alexander drove into him.
They crashed against the railing.
The weapon fell.
I kicked it down the stairs.
The man grabbed Alexander’s coat and pulled him toward the edge.
I saw Alexander lose his footing.
Without thinking, I swung the metal IV pole.
It struck the attacker’s shoulder.
He released Alexander.
Dominic pulled the man down and restrained him.
Alexander stared at me.
“You told me to stay behind you,” I said breathlessly.
“That was not staying behind me.”
“He was going to throw you down the stairs.”
Alexander looked as though he wanted to argue.
Instead, he took my hand.
“Move.”
We escaped through the basement into an alley where another SUV waited.
As Dominic placed my mother inside, she grabbed Alexander’s sleeve.
Her eyes focused on the brass key in his hand.
Her face filled with terror.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was in your vase,” he said.
She closed her eyes.
“You should have left it there.”
“Mom,” I said. “What does it open?”
She looked at me with tears running down her face.
“Your father made me promise never to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
Her gaze moved toward the burning red emergency lights in the clinic windows.
“It opens a deposit box beneath South Station.”
“What is inside?”
She started shaking.
“The proof your father died trying to protect.”
Alexander leaned closer.
“What proof?”
My mother looked at him.
Then she said the sentence that changed everything.
“Proof that Victor Hale did not build his empire alone.”
Her eyes moved toward the gold ring on Alexander’s right hand.
May you like
The ring bearing the Rossi family crest.
“Your father built it with him.”
