Chapter 3 - THE MAN IN THE HOSPITAL HALL
The man disappeared from the window before I reached the door.
Mara caught my arm.
“Don’t chase him.”
“He has a syringe.”
“And he wants you separated from your wife.”
She was right.
I hated that she was right.
Reyes opened the door instead, weapon held low beside his thigh.
The emergency corridor glowed red beneath backup lighting.
Nurses hurried between rooms.
Patients called out.
At the far end of the hall, an orderly pushed an empty wheelchair toward a service elevator.
“Gray scrubs,” I told Reyes.
The orderly turned his head.
Wrong man.
Reyes lowered his hand slightly.
Then Mara saw something.
“Stairs.”
The stairwell door was closing.
She and Reyes moved.
I stayed.
That was the hardest decision I made all night.
Every instinct in me wanted to follow.
But Jessi had already been hurt because the people around her believed they could control me through anger.
I wasn’t giving them that weapon.
I shut the door and dragged a visitor’s chair beneath the handle.
“Luca.”
I turned.
Jessi looked terrified.
Not for herself.
For me.
“I’m staying right here.”
“You should help them.”
“They have badges.”
“So do you.”
“Tonight I’m your husband.”
That finally made her stop arguing.
Outside, shoes pounded against tile.
A man shouted.
Then there was a crash.
I stood between Jessi’s bed and the door until Mara returned three minutes later.
She had blood on the sleeve of her jacket.
Not hers.
“We got him.”
“Who?”
“Deputy Neil Barlow.”
I knew the name.
Five-year veteran of the Harrington County Sheriff’s Office.
One of the men who had been standing near Sheriff Sterling’s office when they brought me in.
“What was in the syringe?”
“Hospital security is securing it.”
Reyes entered behind her.
“He had a stolen employee access badge, a burner phone, and a keycard to this floor.”
“Who ordered him?”
“He’s not talking.”
“He will.”
Reyes gave me a warning look.
“That is not an invitation, Luca.”
“I know.”
Jessi shifted beneath the blankets.
“Did he come for the recordings?”
Mara walked closer.
“He came for you.”
Silence settled over the room.
Mara’s expression softened slightly.
“Mrs. Vance, we need to move you.”
“My surgeon—”
“Your medical team will come with us.”
“Where?”
“We’re establishing protective custody in another medical facility.”
Jessi looked at me.
I nodded.
She was not staying in a county hospital where the sheriff could send deputies through the front door.
Within forty minutes, an ambulance belonging to a federal medical transport contractor was waiting in a secured loading bay.
Two unmarked vehicles would accompany it.
The route would not be shared with local authorities.
Before they moved Jessi, she caught my sleeve.
“The blue box.”
“We’ll handle it later.”
“No.”
Her voice was weak but urgent.
“If they know about the house—”
“They probably searched it already.”
“That’s why I moved it.”
“Where?”
She looked at Mara and Reyes.
“I want Luca to know first.”
Mara glanced at Reyes.
Then both stepped away.
Jessi waited until they were across the room.
“Saint Matthew’s.”
I frowned.
“The church?”
“Our old church.”
Then I remembered.
Before we bought our house, Jessi volunteered there every Saturday helping restore county historical documents.
The church had an old basement archive where records from several demolished local churches were stored.
“What did you do?”
“There’s a blue metal document box inside the cabinet marked Christmas Pageant.”
I nearly laughed.
“You hid criminal evidence under Christmas decorations?”
“Nobody steals church pageant paperwork.”
Fair point.
“What’s inside?”
“Copies of the surveys. The recorder. A flash drive.”
“Anything else?”
Jessi hesitated.
That was when I knew there was something worse.
“Camila gave me a ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“She found it in the county clerk archive.”
“Original?”
“I think so.”
“What’s in it?”
“Property transfers going back eleven years.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Luca, Flynn wasn’t the first one.”
A chill traveled up my spine.
“Sheriff Sterling?”
“His name isn’t on anything.”
“Of course not.”
“But the same four companies appear over and over.”
Shell companies.
We had found three.
Apparently there was a fourth.
“What company?”
“Harrow Creek Holdings.”
I had never heard the name.
But Mara had.
She was standing fifteen feet away.
And when Jessi said it, Mara turned around.
Fast.
“What did you say?”
“Harrow Creek Holdings.”
Mara walked back to the bed.
“Are you certain?”
Jessi nodded.
Mara and Reyes exchanged a look.
I knew that look.
It meant part of this investigation existed above my clearance inside the task force.
“What is Harrow Creek?” I asked.
Reyes answered carefully.
“A company we have been trying to identify for fourteen months.”
“Doing what?”
“Receiving money.”
“From Sterling?”
“From everybody.”
He opened the folder he had brought earlier.
Inside were banking summaries.
Federal disaster recovery contracts.
Infrastructure reimbursements.
Payments from Sterling Development.
Payments from two engineering subcontractors.
Payments from a waste-management company.
Payments from something called Liberty Municipal Consulting.
All terminating at Harrow Creek Holdings.
“Who owns it?” Jessi asked.
“That’s the problem,” Reyes said. “On paper, a trust in Delaware owns it. The trust is administered through another company. We’ve been following layers.”
Mara looked at me.
“If the ledger links Sterling land transfers directly to Harrow Creek, we finally have probable cause to attack the ownership structure.”
Jessi’s eyes widened.
“So the blue box matters.”
“Very much.”
Reyes took out his phone.
“We’ll secure the church.”
“No local officers,” I said.
“Obviously.”
I wanted to go with them.
Mara knew it.
“You stay with Jessi.”
“I know.”
“I’m saying it because your face says otherwise.”
Twenty minutes later, Reyes left with a federal evidence team.
Jessi was transferred soon afterward.
We traveled thirty-seven miles north to a military-affiliated medical center where access could be controlled more tightly.
By dawn, she was inside a private room on a restricted floor.
Her orthopedic surgeon briefed us.
The damage was severe.
Multiple fractures.
Several surgeries ahead.
Months of rehabilitation.
But she would walk again.
Maybe not quickly.
Maybe not without pain.
But she would walk.
For the first time since the call overseas, I let myself breathe.
Jessi saw it.
“I’m not getting out of physical therapy, am I?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re going to be unbearable.”
“I’ve been training for marriage supervision for eight years.”
She laughed once.
Then winced.
I kissed her hand.
At 6:12 a.m., Mara entered.
One look at her face killed the small moment of peace.
“What happened?”
“Saint Matthew’s was breached before our team arrived.”
I stood.
“The box?”
“Gone.”
My stomach dropped.
“Cameras?”
“Church system was disabled at 2:41 this morning.”
Someone had known.
Someone besides Jessi knew.
“Camila,” Jessi whispered.
I looked at her.
“No.”
“She was the only person I told I’d moved the evidence.”
“She wouldn’t betray you.”
“I know.”
That was worse.
Reyes appeared behind Mara.
He held up a clear evidence bag.
Inside it was a blue metal box.
Jessi stared.
“You found it?”
“Not at the church.”
Reyes placed the bag on the table.
“It was left on the hood of one of our vehicles outside the hospital.”
The lid had been forced open.
The recorder was missing.
The flash drive was missing.
The ledger was missing.
Only one object remained.
A photograph.
I recognized it immediately.
It had been taken six months earlier at our backyard barbecue.
Jessi and me.
Camila standing between us.
On the back, somebody had written five words in black marker.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEPLOYED.
Then Jessi’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
No one moved.
It rang again.
Reyes nodded.
I answered and put it on speaker.
For several seconds, all we heard was breathing.
Then a woman whispered.
“Luca?”
Jessi sat upright despite the pain.
“Camila?”
A sob came through the speaker.
“Don’t come looking for me.”
Behind her, a man laughed.
Flynn Sterling.
May you like
Then the call disconnected.
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