“You really should have stayed retired, Richard,” he said.
The words hit like a blade between ribs. Everything rearranged in my mind—Alan insisting I see Emily first. Alan controlling the room. Alan handling the scans. Alan knowing exactly what had been discovered inside her.
“The implant,” I said. “You put it in.”
“Not personally,” he replied. “But yes. We needed to know where she’d go if she ran.”
Emily began to cry silently. “I thought Daniel set me up. Alan told me Daniel was betraying me. He said if I spoke, Daniel would die first.”
“That’s why you said he wasn’t alone,” I whispered.
She nodded. “Daniel got me out of the house tonight. He told me to take the files and come to you. Before I could leave town, someone grabbed me in the parking garage. I never saw his face. When I woke up, Alan was there. He carved those words into my back and told me you’d blame Daniel. He wanted you angry. Distracted.”
Rage flooded through me.
“You son of a—”
Alan moved faster than I expected. He grabbed a metal oxygen canister and hurled it at Ortiz. Her shot went wide. The canister smashed the mirror, glass exploding across the room.
Alan ran.
Ortiz cursed and chased him. I started after them, but Emily grabbed my sleeve.
“Dad—the files.”
She pointed to the bandage taped along her right side, near her ribs. Not the shoulder. Not the implant.
Another hidden object.
I tore the dressing away. Beneath it was a thin flash drive sealed in plastic.
Emily whispered, “Daniel hid it on me before he sent me out.”
Then my phone rang.
Daniel.
I answered on speaker.
“Richard,” he said, tense and urgent, “don’t trust Mercer. I’m in the hospital garage. I have copies of everything. Men are following me.”
A crash sounded behind him. Footsteps.
“Daniel, listen to me,” I said. “Emily’s alive.”
Silence. Then a strangled breath.
“Oh God.”
“Get to the south stairwell,” Ortiz shouted from the hall. “Now!”
We moved.
Alan had only made it about thirty yards before security and officers cornered him near the nurses’ station. He was on the floor in handcuffs by the time we reached the stairwell.
Daniel burst in from below—bruised, shaken, but alive.
The moment Emily saw him, she broke.
Not from fear.
From relief.
