Chapter 1 - The Name in the Records
The first message arrived while Blake was teaching Abigail how to make a rabbit shadow against the hospital wall.
Outside the room, Darlene stared at the words on her phone until they stopped resembling words at all.
CHECK HIS DAUGHTER'S HOSPITAL RECORDS.
She had spent thirty years learning how to recognize a threat.
This one was different because it had been aimed at a child.
Darlene called her attorney, Naomi Price, and asked one question.
“Who authorized the pediatric file you brought me yesterday?”
Naomi hesitated.
“The benefits office said the material came through your private medical foundation.”
“I never requested Abigail's chart.”
A silence opened between them.
“Then someone wanted you to see it,” Naomi said.
Darlene looked through the glass at the little girl and the father smiling beside her.
“Lock down every record of that request and send a privacy officer here.”
Blake appeared in the doorway a moment later.
“Something happened.”
It was a statement, not a question.
Darlene showed him the messages.
He read them without moving, but his face changed on the final line.
“Tell me what you know.”
“Only that Julian had help.”
Blake looked toward the nurses' station.
“Then Abigail leaves this floor tonight.”
“We should coordinate with her physicians.”
“Of course,” he said, his voice tight.
“But whoever wrote that message knows she's here.”
An hour later, an independent hospital privacy officer entered with Naomi and two sealed audit reports.
The first confirmed that Abigail's files had been viewed without a treatment reason.
The second showed that an outside administrator had altered a note from an appointment three years earlier.
Naomi read the name of the administrator.
“Eleanor Voss.”
Blake went rigid.
He knew that name.
Eleanor had worked at the hospital where his wife, Sarah, died.
Darlene watched his hands.
“Blake?”
“My wife didn't die here,” he said.
“Sarah died at St. Agnes.”
Naomi turned the next page.
“So did Eleanor's former patient, Abigail Reed.”
Blake stepped closer.
“Reed was Sarah's maiden name.”
The privacy officer swallowed.
“The older chart lists Abigail as the subject of a confidential sample collection.”
“What kind of sample?”
“We don't yet know.”
Blake's phone rang.
The caller was the former Army friend who had helped him after the funeral.
He answered on speaker.
“Blake, I'm sorry to call so late, but somebody was at Sarah's grave tonight.”
“Who?”
“I couldn't see his face.”
A pause.
“He dug up the stone you buried beneath her headstone.”
Blake closed his eyes.
The stone had contained a tiny brass key Sarah made him promise never to use unless Abigail was threatened.
May you like
And now it was gone.
