Chapter 16 - THE FALSE AMBULANCE

The drug in my intravenous line made the ceiling sway.

I forced my eyes to remain open.

The ambulance interior looked authentic at first glance.

Oxygen tanks.

Cardiac monitor.

Medication cabinet.

Then I noticed labels placed crookedly over older labels and a blood-pressure cuff still wrapped in factory plastic.

The vehicle was a stage built to pass through checkpoints.

Linda sat near my feet with one hand resting on a black medical bag.

Her borrowed scrubs were too large.

Her pointed shoes remained perfectly clean.

Even while running from murder charges, she had chosen shoes that announced control.

“Is Hannah alive?” I asked.

Linda checked her phone.

“She was breathing when we left.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have.”

“Who is driving?”

“A man who understands loyalty.”

The partition blocked my view of him.

I heard no conversation from the front.

Only the engine and tires moving over wet pavement.

I tested the straps.

They were real ambulance restraints, designed to hold injured patients safely.

Linda had turned them into bindings.

My phone was gone.

The fetal monitor attached to my abdomen was portable, but its display showed only my pulse.

No fetal signal appeared.

Panic rose.

I tried to move.

A sharp pull crossed my lower abdomen.

Linda watched without sympathy.

“The surviving one is stronger than I expected,” she said.

“Do not talk about my baby.”

“Your baby is the reason all of this became necessary.”

“No.”

“Your choices are the reason.”

She smiled faintly.

“You sound like Alice.”

“My mother tried to stop you from stealing sick employees’ money.”

“Your mother enjoyed moral superiority.”

“She enjoyed standing in rooms and making everyone else feel dirty.”

“You delayed calling an ambulance while she was dying.”

Linda’s expression hardened.

“She collapsed during an argument.”

“I believed she was pretending.”

The same story.

She is faking.

She always does this.

Linda had used disbelief as permission to ignore suffering more than once.

“You knew she was not pretending,” I said.

“She had a folder you wanted.”

“I took what belonged to my family.”

“It belonged to the employees.”

“Everything in that company existed because I kept Harold focused.”

“He would have given away half of it to anyone who cried in his office.”

“He created the company.”

“I preserved it.”

“You hollowed it out.”

“I made it powerful.”

Her voice sharpened, then softened again.

Control returned like a mask sliding into place.

Outside, the road changed.

The ambulance began climbing.

My ears popped.

We were moving into the foothills.

I needed to leave a trace.

I pulled at the tape holding the intravenous line and let a small strip fall beside the stretcher.

Then I rubbed my thumb against the edge of the rail until skin broke.

I pressed blood beneath the mattress seam.

Small evidence.

The kind my mother would have understood.

Linda noticed the movement.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying not to vomit.”

She opened the black bag and removed a syringe.

“Then you should sleep.”

“What is that?”

“Something safe.”

“Like Paige’s tea?”

Her hand stopped.

“You spoke to her.”

“She kept a sample.”

For the first time, real alarm crossed Linda’s face.

“The laboratory found the drug,” I continued.

“Your fingerprints were on the packet.”

“She was always careless.”

“She preserved the proof.”

“Graham testified.”

“Graham lies when frightened.”

“Price testified too.”

Her mouth tightened.

“He lies when cornered.”

“Harold recorded you replacing his medication.”

That struck deeper.

Linda stared at me.

“There was no recording.”

“There was a locked room behind the library.”

“The one you tried to burn.”

I watched calculation move through her eyes.

She had not known the door had been opened.

She had not known what survived.

For the first time, I possessed information she needed.

I used it.

“Harold preserved the pills,” I said.

“He explained Rachel.”

“He explained my mother.”

“He explained what you did to Ethan.”

“I did nothing to Ethan.”

“You trained him to obey you and called it love.”

“I protected him from weak people.”

“You made him weak enough to need you.”

Linda raised the syringe.

I saw anger in her wrist.

Then she lowered it.

She needed me conscious.

That meant the waiver still mattered.

“You cannot recover the company,” I said.

“The receiver has control.”

“Receivers can be removed.”

“The beneficiary schedule is public evidence now.”

“Documents can be challenged.”

“Not if I refuse to sign.”

Her smile returned.

“You will sign.”

“And then?”

“You will record a statement saying Ethan forced you to accuse me.”

“You will admit the kick was an accident.”

“You will assign your custodial interest to a neutral family trustee.”

“You.”

“A qualified person.”

“You mean yourself.”

“I mean someone who will not destroy generations of work because she is emotional.”

“You attacked a pregnant woman at a birthday party.”

“And you are still speaking.”

The coldness of the reply removed any remaining doubt about the destination.

Linda did not intend to release me after the recording.

The ambulance slowed.

The driver spoke through the partition for the first time.

“Roadblock ahead.”

I recognized the voice.

Colin Mercer’s escaped partner from Hannah’s house had not been identified, but I had heard him shout from downstairs.

This was the same voice.

Linda looked toward the front.

“Which roadblock?”

“State patrol at the canyon turn.”

“Medical checkpoint or search?”

“Search.”

She opened a compartment and removed a hospital identification bracelet printed with another woman’s name.

She fastened it around my wrist.

“Your name is Laura Greene,” she said.

“You suffered a placental hemorrhage.”

“You are sedated and cannot speak.”

I stared at her.

“Police know I was taken.”

“Police know a fire disrupted a hospital.”

“They do not yet know which vehicle left.”

She injected a small amount of medication into the intravenous port.

My limbs became heavier.

The ambulance stopped.

A flashlight moved across the rear windows.

Someone knocked.

The driver opened the doors.

Cold air entered with a state trooper.

Linda placed an oxygen mask over my face.

“High-risk transfer,” she said.

“Placental bleed.”

“Where are you headed?” the trooper asked.

“Mountain View Specialty Center.”

“There is no center by that name on this route.”

Linda did not hesitate.

“Temporary emergency site after the Denver outage.”

The trooper stepped closer to my stretcher.

His flashlight moved over the false bracelet, the intravenous line, and my face.

I tried to speak.

The medication turned my tongue thick.

Linda placed one hand on my shoulder as though comforting me.

Her fingers pressed a warning into the bruise near my collarbone.

The trooper’s radio crackled.

A dispatcher issued a statewide alert for a stolen Summit Life Air ambulance.

The vehicle description matched ours.

The trooper’s eyes lifted.

Linda saw the recognition.

She pulled a gun from beneath the black bag.

The driver slammed the rear door into the trooper and accelerated.

A shot fired outside.

The ambulance swerved.

I rolled against the straps.

Linda struck the cabinet and lost the gun beneath the stretcher.

The vehicle sped up the canyon road with patrol cars behind us.

Sirens filled the night.

The driver shouted that the next turn was blocked.

Linda crawled across the floor searching for the gun.

I reached down with my fingertips and found cold metal first.

I could not lift it properly while restrained.

I pushed it beneath the oxygen cabinet instead.

Linda saw what I had done.

She struck me across the face.

Pain flashed through my jaw.

The portable monitor alarmed.

This time it showed a fetal heart rate.

The number dropped.

One hundred twenty.

One hundred ten.

Ninety-eight.

Linda looked at the screen.

For the first time, she seemed frightened by something other than losing control.

“Stop the vehicle,” I begged.

The driver ignored me.

The number fell again.

Eighty-seven.

A violent contraction tightened my abdomen.

Blood spread beneath me.

Linda stared at it.

Then she made the same choice she had made when my mother collapsed.

She looked toward escape instead of calling for help.

“Keep driving,” she ordered.

The ambulance broke through a temporary barrier and turned onto an unplowed mountain road.

Ahead, the pavement ended near the abandoned Alpine Crown lodge where my mother had attended the charity retreat years earlier.

As the ambulance climbed, I tried to reconstruct the route from movement and sound.

We crossed railroad tracks approximately ten minutes after leaving the hospital.

We passed through a tunnel where the engine echoed for seven seconds.

The vehicle leaned sharply left, then climbed for nearly twenty minutes.

My mother had taught Hannah and me to notice details whenever we felt unsafe.

She called it keeping a quiet map.

At the time, we thought it was another habit from her accounting work.

Now I understood that she had lived under threat long before we recognized it.

I counted turns and pressed a fingernail into the stretcher padding after each one.

The marks would mean nothing to Linda.

To investigators, they might confirm how long the ambulance traveled between known roads.

I also watched the medication bag.

A handwritten label showed a dosage and the initials S.P.

Samuel Price was in custody, but the initials could identify a supplier or protocol connected to him.

When Linda looked away, I peeled the corner of the label and stuck it beneath my sleeve.

Evidence did not need to be dramatic.

Sometimes survival depended on leaving one small fact where another person could find it.

My mother had built an entire case from copied numbers.

I built mine from tape, blood, turns, and a torn label while pretending the drug had made me passive.

Linda had brought me to the place where she believed Alice should have learned to stop.

The fetal heart rate dropped to seventy-nine.

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Behind us, sirens grew louder.

In front of us, the road narrowed toward a cliff.