Chapter 3 - Someone Was Already Inside
I did not call Elias immediately.
That surprised me more than the message itself.
The doctor in me took over first.
I screenshotted everything.
I forwarded the images to my personal email.
I photographed the phone with the hospital’s evidence camera so the metadata would not be the only proof.
Then I called hospital security.
By the time Elias returned to the corridor, two officers were already reviewing camera feeds.
“What happened?”
I handed him my phone.
He read the message once.
Then again.
His entire body went still.
“Where did you get this?”
“It arrived twelve minutes ago.”
“Unknown number?”
“Yes.”
He swore under his breath.
One of the security officers looked up from the monitor.
“Doctor, this angle appears to be from the east stairwell landing.”
“Is that restricted?”
“Badge access after ten.”
“Pull the log.”
“We are.”
Elias turned to me.
“You’re not going home alone.”
“I wasn’t asking your permission.”
“I’m not giving permission.”
“Then choose your words better.”
His jaw tightened.
“Sophie is upstairs with a fractured wrist.”
“I know where my daughter is.”
“And I’m seven months pregnant and still capable of deciding how I leave my workplace.”
“I know that too.”
“Do you?”
The security officer wisely pretended not to hear us.
A minute later, the access log populated.
The east stairwell had been opened with three badges in the thirty-minute window.
One belonged to a respiratory therapist.
One belonged to an environmental services supervisor.
The third belonged to a physician who had been off duty for two days.
I leaned toward the screen.
“Dr. Han’s badge?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Badges get borrowed.”
“Not his.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he lost it last week and security issued him a replacement.”
The officer’s face changed.
“Was the old badge deactivated?”
“It should have been.”
He began typing faster.
Elias looked at me.
“Someone planned this.”
“Maybe.”
“Adelaide.”
“I’m not jumping from one photograph to a conspiracy.”
“You received a threat twenty minutes after I told you Marina was killed.”
“I am aware of the timing.”
“Then stop pretending this is random.”
“I’m not pretending anything.”
I hated that my voice was beginning to shake.
I hated even more that he noticed.
He softened instantly.
That made me angrier.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like I’m fragile.”
“I’m looking at you like you’re in danger.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
“No.”
He lowered his voice.
“They aren’t.”
Security escorted me to the physicians’ parking garage just before dawn.
Elias came with us because refusing would have caused a scene.
The garage smelled like cold concrete and exhaust.
My car sat under a fluorescent light three rows from the elevator.
At first, everything looked normal.
Then I saw the driver’s door.
It was slightly open.
I stopped.
The security officer raised one hand.
“Stay here.”
He approached slowly.
The second officer circled around the passenger side.
Elias moved in front of me without thinking.
I stepped around him.
“Do not use your body as a wall.”
“Adelaide, now is not the time.”
“It is exactly the time.”
The officer opened the door fully.
My handbag was still on the passenger seat.
My stethoscope was still in the console.
Nothing appeared stolen.
Then the second officer called from the rear.
“Doctor?”
I moved closer.
He pointed through the back window.
A folded piece of paper lay on the back seat.
It had not been there when I arrived for work.
The officer put on gloves and removed it carefully.
One sentence was printed in block letters.
He left once.
He can leave again.
I felt the baby move.
Elias read over my shoulder.
His breathing changed.
“Call the police,” he said.
Security already had.
By six-thirty, two detectives were taking statements in a conference room near administration.
Detective Lena Ortiz was in her forties, compact, alert, and unimpressed by wealth.
I liked her immediately.
Her partner, Detective Owen Price, asked most of the procedural questions.
Ortiz watched Elias.
“You had a similar threat before?”
“Yes.”
“Did you retain it?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“In a safe at my office.”
“Why didn’t you turn over the original when you reported it?”
“I gave the police a copy.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Elias looked at her.
“I didn’t trust the detective assigned to the case.”
Ortiz leaned back.
“Why?”
“He told Graham Voss I had accused him before I ever agreed to have Voss contacted.”
That caught my attention.
“Graham knew?”
“Yes.”
“You never told me that.”
“No.”
Ortiz looked between us.
“You two are going to need to stop surprising each other while I’m in the room.”
“That may take a while,” I said.
For the first time, she almost smiled.
Then she slid the new note into an evidence sleeve.
“Dr. Brooks, do you have somewhere else you can stay?”
“Yes.”
That was a lie.
My apartment was my only home.
My parents were in Portland.
My closest friend, Dr. Naomi Patel, lived forty minutes away with her husband and two children.
I could have stayed with her.
I simply did not want whoever was watching me to follow me to her house.
Elias knew exactly what I was thinking.
“You can stay at my place.”
I looked at him.
“No.”
“It has private security.”
“No.”
“Adelaide.”
“Absolutely not.”
Detective Ortiz tapped her pen against the table.
“His house might actually be a bad idea.”
“Thank you.”
“If someone is targeting both of you, a location connected to him is predictable.”
Elias looked irritated.
I felt vindicated for three seconds.
Then Ortiz continued.
“Do you have access to a hospital-owned apartment or physician housing?”
I nodded.
“There are two furnished units for visiting specialists.”
“Use one temporarily.”
By eight in the morning, administration had quietly moved me into a tenth-floor apartment across the street from the medical center.
Only four people knew the unit number.
My department chair.
Hospital security.
Detective Ortiz.
Me.
Elias took Sophie home after discharge.
He wanted to stay nearby.
I refused.
He wanted to send one of his private security teams.
I refused that too.
“I don’t trust anyone you hired until I know who was moving money through your company.”
He had no answer to that.
At noon, I finally slept.
At four, I woke to the sound of water running.
For several seconds, I lay still and tried to place it.
The apartment was unfamiliar.
The sound came from the kitchen.
I reached for my phone.
No missed calls.
No messages.
I stepped into the hallway.
The faucet was on.
Water spilled into the sink.
While security searched my car, I remembered every ordinary object inside it.
A reusable coffee cup.
Two medical journals.
An unopened package of baby wipes.
A small paper bag containing socks I had bought for the baby during my lunch break.
The idea that someone had touched any of those things made them feel contaminated.
When Detective Ortiz arrived, she asked whether I wanted to sit down.
“No.”
“You look pale.”
“I am standing in a parking garage at dawn beside a car someone entered without stealing anything.”
“Fair.”
She gave me a moment before continuing.
“Any enemies?”
“I’m an emergency physician.”
“That is not a no.”
“I have had angry patients.”
“Threats?”
“Occasionally.”
“Recent?”
“No.”
“Any complaints?”
“Several.”
Elias looked at me.
I shrugged.
“You cannot work emergency medicine without someone deciding you are personally responsible for the existence of waiting rooms.”
Ortiz almost smiled.
Then she became serious again.
“What about former partners?”
I looked at Elias.
“He is standing here.”
“Others?”
“No one relevant.”
Elias’s expression shifted at the word relevant.
I noticed and resented noticing.
Ortiz asked him the same questions.
His list was longer.
Business rivals.
Former contractors.
People involved in lawsuits.
A developer who had threatened him during a zoning dispute.
A former employee arrested for embezzlement.
By the time he finished, I understood how impossible it would be to isolate danger from ordinary resentment.
“You live like this?” I asked.
“Like what?”
“With a list of people who might plausibly hate you.”
He gave me a tired look.
“Real estate is more emotional than medicine.”
“That is the most offensive thing you’ve said all night.”
For one second, we almost sounded like ourselves.
Then the evidence technician held up the note from my back seat.
He left once.
He can leave again.
The sentence killed the moment.
Ortiz asked if it referred to Elias.
“I assume so.”
“Could it refer to anyone else?”
“No.”
Elias looked at the note.
“It is trying to make her doubt me.”
I turned toward him.
“I already doubt you.”
“That is what makes it useful.”
The statement chilled me.
The threat was not merely physical.
It was psychological.
Whoever wrote it knew exactly where the fracture already existed.
They did not need to create distrust.
They only needed to widen it.
A glass sat beneath it, overflowing.
I knew with absolute certainty I had not left it there.
Then I saw something on the counter.
Ortiz later showed me the photograph attached to the threat.
The angle revealed part of the stairwell railing and a reflection in the glass.
A hospital volunteer vest appeared faintly in that reflection.
It might have belonged to the photographer.
It might have belonged to someone passing by.
Either way, the hospital was no longer neutral ground.
That realization changed how I looked at every hallway.
The place where I had always felt most competent suddenly contained blind spots I had never considered.
My pregnancy ultrasound photograph.
The one I kept tucked inside my wallet.
As the detectives photographed my car, the sun rose over the garage entrance.
Morning traffic began outside.
People were going to work, buying coffee, taking children to school.
Ordinary life continued six floors below our panic.
I wanted badly to step into that normal world.
Instead, I watched an evidence bag close around a note written by someone who knew too much about me.
Underneath it was a hospital visitor badge.
The printed name made my knees weaken.
May you like
MARINA MERCER.
