Chapter 6 - The Hospital With No Patients
Old Mercy Hospital had been abandoned for nine years.
Perfect for ghosts.
Perfect for men who wanted witnesses to disappear.
Detective Reed placed tactical officers around the perimeter.
Luca’s people stayed farther back at my insistence.
I wore a wire.
The flash drive in my pocket was fake.
At 11:03 p.m., I walked through the emergency entrance alone.
Every instinct screamed at me to turn around.
I kept moving.
“Dad?”
My voice echoed.
A fluorescent light flickered.
Then Ethan stepped from behind the old nurses’ station.
For one terrible second, my body remembered him before my mind did.
My shoulders tightened.
Breath shortened.
He smiled.
“Claire.”
I forced myself not to retreat.
“Where’s my father?”
“You look different.”
“Where is he?”
“You never used to speak to me like that.”
“I used to be afraid of you.”
His smile vanished.
“You should still be.”
A door opened behind him.
Dominic Varela emerged.
He was almost sixty, elegant, gray-haired, wearing a camel coat that probably cost more than my car.
And beside him—
My knees nearly failed.
An older man sat in a wheelchair.
Thinner than memory.
Gray beard.
A scar across his temple.
But those eyes.
My eyes.
“Dad?”
Michael Bennett looked at me.
“Claire?”
One word erased twelve years.
I moved toward him.
Ethan blocked me.
“The drive.”
I took it out.
“Let him go.”
Dominic laughed.
“You have your father’s stubbornness.”
“You kept him alive.”
“Insurance.”
My stomach twisted.
“Against what?”
“Samuel.”
Dominic began talking because men like him always believed their version of history deserved an audience.
Antonio DeLuca had discovered Dominic was stealing from the organization.
He planned to remove him.
Dominic arranged the warehouse ambush.
My father heard Antonio identify him.
Dominic couldn’t kill Michael immediately because Samuel had hidden evidence and threatened to release it if Michael died.
So my father became leverage.
Then Samuel disappeared.
Years passed.
Dominic assumed the evidence was gone.
Until Samuel resurfaced at St. Catherine’s.
“And Ethan?” I asked.
Ethan’s face tightened.
Dominic smiled.
“Useful.”
The single word cut Ethan deeper than anything I could have said.
“You told me—”
Dominic ignored him.
“You were supposed to stay close to her, locate Samuel’s evidence, and keep her manageable.”
Manageable.
I looked at Ethan.
“So that’s what I was?”
His eyes flashed.
“It changed.”
“No.”
“Claire, I loved you.”
“You watched me before you met me.”
“I fell for you.”
“And then hit me.”
His face twisted.
“You made me crazy.”
There it was.
The oldest excuse in the world.
I almost felt sorry for the woman I had been six months earlier.
Almost.
“You were cruel because you chose cruelty.”
I looked him directly in the eyes.
“You don’t get to make me responsible for the man you decided to become.”
Something shattered behind his expression.
He grabbed my arm.
“Claire—”
I pulled away.
The wire under my shirt crackled.
Ethan heard it.
His face changed.
“She’s wired!”
Everything happened at once.
Dominic reached inside his coat.
Police shouted from the corridor.
Ethan grabbed me.
A gunshot exploded.
Then another.
I fell.
For one horrifying second I thought I had been shot.
Then I saw Ethan on the floor.
His shoulder bleeding.
Dominic ran.
Luca appeared from the opposite corridor.
He could have chased his uncle.
Instead, he ran directly to me.
“Claire.”
“I’m okay.”
His hands stopped inches from my face.
He wanted to touch me.
He waited.
I nodded.
Only then did he cup my cheek.
Behind us, Detective Reed reached Michael.
“Mr. Bennett, you’re safe.”
My father began crying.
So did I.
Luca helped me stand.
Then someone shouted.
“Gun!”
Dominic stood on the second-floor walkway.
His weapon pointed directly at Luca.
I saw it before Luca did.
I shoved him.
The gun fired.
Pain ripped across my side.
I hit the floor.
Luca caught me.
His face changed into something terrifying.
“Claire.”
I looked down.
Blood spread across my shirt.
May you like
“Pressure,” I whispered automatically.
Then darkness swallowed everything.
