Chapter 10 - THE SHOT
Ethan moved before Samuel fired.
He struck Samuel’s wrist.
The gunshot tore through the ceiling.
I dropped behind the server cabinet.
The two men crashed into the wall.
Samuel was nearly seventy, but he fought with trained precision.
Ethan was weak from years of confinement.
Samuel drove him to the floor.
Dr. Carter entered the room and froze at the sight of his father.
Samuel aimed at him.
“You were never strong enough.”
William stepped closer.
“Maybe not.”
His eyes moved toward me.
“But I’m not alone.”
I grabbed the broken device casing and struck Samuel’s knee.
Ethan pulled him down.
William kicked the pistol away.
Officer Ramirez appeared with his weapon drawn.
“Don’t move!”
Samuel stopped fighting.
Then he smiled.
“You think arrest changes anything?”
Ramirez handcuffed him.
Bradley’s voice came through the corridor speakers.
“Father!”
He had escaped the examination bed.
Dr. Lisa screamed from upstairs.
We ran back.
Tiffany was gone.
The nurse lay unconscious beside the ultrasound machine.
Bradley had taken Tiffany through the secondary hallway.
A trail of blood marked the floor.
Dr. Carter checked the clinic security system.
Bradley’s vehicle had left forty seconds earlier.
Tiffany’s fetal monitor still transmitted remotely.
Her contractions were now three minutes apart.
“She’s going into premature labor,” Lisa said.
Samuel sat against the wall, cuffed.
“He’ll take her to the extraction center.”
“Where?” I demanded.
He smiled.
“You were there eight months ago.”
The photograph.
The windowless room.
I remembered the drive now.
Bradley had taken me north.
Across a bridge.
Past a water tower.
A church bell had rung before I lost consciousness.
Ethan looked at me.
“Carter Medical Research Center is beneath St. Matthew’s Hospital.”
Dr. Carter froze.
“That hospital closed years ago.”
“The upper floors did.”
Police rushed Samuel outside.
I refused an ambulance.
Dr. Carter climbed into Ramirez’s vehicle with me and Ethan.
Rain blurred the city lights.
My phone rang.
Bradley.
I answered.
Tiffany screamed in the background.
“She needs a doctor.”
Bradley’s breathing was frantic.
“She only needs to deliver.”
“She’s thirty-five weeks.”
“The child is viable.”
“She is not a container.”
His voice hardened.
“That is all she ever was.”
I closed my eyes.
“You said this was about me.”
“It is.”
“Then release her.”
A pause.
“Come alone.”
“Where?”
“You remember.”
The call ended.
Ethan looked at me.
“He’ll kill you.”
I placed one hand over my stomach.
“He already tried.”
We reached the abandoned hospital.
The entrance doors were open.
Inside the lobby, blood streaked the floor toward an elevator.
The elevator display showed one level that did not exist on the building plans.
B4.
May you like
The doors opened.
Inside was Tiffany’s beige shoe.
