Chapter 7 - The Man Looking for Chloe
David ripped out his IV.
Dr. Winters shouted.
Marcus was already moving.
Hospital security locked Chloe’s room.
I kept her against me.
“Mom, what’s happening?”
“Stay behind me.”
The armed man never reached us.
Security caught him near the stairwell.
No gun.
The reported weapon was a phone held beneath his jacket.
A diversion.
He wanted officers focused upstairs.
Why?
David’s ICU room.
We returned.
The room had been searched.
Drawers open.
Bedside cabinet emptied.
Medical records missing.
But nothing else.
“What were they looking for?”
Cole checked David’s medication box.
Then froze.
A small key was gone.
David frowned.
“What key?”
Cole stared.
“You don't know?”
Apparently Vincent Carter had left one item with Cole before dying.
A safe-deposit key.
Instructions:
Give it to David only if the Carter medical registry resurfaces.
Cole had hidden it beneath David’s hospital drawer while waiting to determine whether tonight’s events qualified.
Someone knew.
Someone took it.
“Where does it lead?”
“Private vault.”
“Which bank?”
Cole shook his head.
“The key itself had no institution markings.”
Then hospital security brought the fake armed man.
Twenty-eight.
Terrified.
Paid cash.
By a woman.
Description:
Silver hair.
Elegant.
Mid-sixties.
Everyone looked at Margaret.
She slapped him.
Even David seemed impressed.
“Not me.”
The man shook his head desperately.
“No! Not her!”
Another silver-haired woman.
Then Cole went pale.
“Amelia.”
Marcus stared.
“No.”
“If she’s here…”
Why would Amelia steal her own father’s key?
Unless Vincent left something she feared.
Then David looked at me.
“Natasha, take Chloe home.”
“No.”
“Please.”
That stopped me.
He wasn't ordering.
He was asking.
“I'll have people—”
“No Carter guards.”
He accepted it.
“Then police.”
“No.”
He looked frustrated.
Good.
Then Chloe walked to his bedside.
“You're my dad?”
The room went silent.
My heart stopped.
“How—”
She shrugged.
“You all whisper badly.”
David stared at her.
I wanted to disappear.
Chloe continued:
“Mom said you didn't know.”
David looked at me.
Then back at her.
“I didn’t.”
“Are you mad?”
He almost broke.
“No.”
“At Mom?”
Long silence.
“Not right now.”
I gave him a look.
He corrected:
“No.”
Chloe thought.
“Okay.”
Then:
“Do you like purple horses?”
David looked at her drawing.
“I do now.”
She smiled.
Something shifted.
Tiny.
Dangerous.
A connection.
Then Marcus’s phone rang.
He listened.
His face changed.
“We found the vault.”
“How?”
“The key was caught on security camera.”
The woman who stole it had entered a private bank on Michigan Avenue.
The camera captured her face.
Cole was right.
Amelia Carter.
Alive.
Older.
Silver-haired.
Then Marcus received a second image.
Amelia wasn't alone.
A man walked beside her.
David saw him.
His entire expression died.
“Impossible.”
“Who?”
He whispered:
“My father.”
Vincent Carter.
The man whose funeral David attended twelve years ago.
May you like
Alive.
And standing beside Amelia.
