Chapter 2 - The Locked Hospital Floor
The first elevator stopped two floors beneath Nora's room.
I watched its numbers freeze on the security screen Bishop had pulled up remotely.
"Three people," he said. "One dressed as a nurse."
I told the hospital charge nurse to lock the ward and call the emergency response team.
She looked at my old driver's license, then at Nora.
"Who exactly are you, Mr. Miller?"
"A father who's asking you not to let strangers onto this floor."
She called security.
For once, someone listened.
The impostor arrived at the stairwell door carrying a medication tray.
A real nurse asked for her hospital identification.
The woman dropped the tray and fled.
Police arrested her near the loading dock.
Her phone had an instruction waiting on its screen.
MAKE THE GIRL SILENT.
I took a photograph before the responding detective could insist the device was none of my business.
Bishop relayed the images to Ruiz and a federal evidence team.
Outside Nora's room, an administrator tried to persuade me to move her to an undisclosed facility chosen by the university.
I asked why Westbridge University was arranging hospital transportation.
He had no answer.
Nora slept after another round of medication.
Beside her bed, I opened the folder Rachel had kept in our attic.
For years I'd avoided it because the folder smelled faintly of her perfume.
There were receipts, a map, a photograph of Nora as a baby, and an envelope labeled FOR DAVID WHEN HE IS READY.
I couldn't remember ever seeing the envelope.
Inside was a letter in Rachel's careful handwriting.
If you are reading this, someone has broken the promise Nathan made to both of us.
I thought Nathan was dead when I first read the sentence.
Now every word had a different meaning.
Rachel wrote that Northbridge had been built from an operation my unit once believed was a rescue mission.
She had found payments linked to false reports, foreign accounts, and families who had disappeared after helping us.
She did not accuse me of knowing.
That made the letter hurt worse.
She warned me that an officer I considered family had learned how to rewrite records so thoroughly that honest men would appear guilty.
The letter ended with an address in Maryland.
Under it she'd written, Ask Daniel why he never came to my funeral.
Daniel Shaw had been my closest friend after Nathan.
And for thirteen years he had avoided every call I made.
I finally understood that the missing witness was only one piece of the trap.
Rachel had left me a map to a man who was still alive.
At the bottom of the envelope was a fresh-looking fingerprint in blue ink.
May you like
Someone had opened it recently.
