Chapter 7: Blackwood

Chapter 7: Blackwood

Blackwood Behavioral Center looked less like a hospital and more like a prison.

High stone walls surrounded the property. Security lights swept across the grounds. The main gates were locked.

Police approached from the front.

Warren and I entered through a service road behind the building.

Inside, the corridors were cold and nearly empty.

A nurse saw us and froze.

“Where is Lily Hale?” Warren demanded.

“I don’t know that name.”

I held up my phone. The bracelet signal was coming from the floor below us.

“You have ten seconds.”

The nurse’s eyes filled with fear.

“They brought a girl in twenty minutes ago. No paperwork. Dr. Mercer told us not to ask questions.”

“Where?”

“Isolation room six.”

We ran downstairs.

The door was locked.

From inside, I heard Lily pounding weakly.

“Dad!”

I drove my shoulder against the door.

“Step back!”

Warren fired at the lock. The door opened.

Lily was sitting on the floor in a hospital gown, her wrists bound with soft restraints. A man in a white coat stood beside her holding a syringe.

“Put it down,” Warren ordered.

Dr. Mercer raised both hands.

“You don’t understand. She was brought in under emergency authority.”

“By whom?”

He looked toward a security camera.

Then the lights went out.

The emergency alarm began screaming.

Someone had cut the power.

Warren pulled Lily behind him. I removed the restraints and wrapped my coat around her.

“Can you walk?”

She nodded, but her legs shook.

Footsteps thundered through the hallway.

A masked man appeared at the stairwell holding a metal bar.

Warren tackled him before he reached us.

The man fought violently, but two officers arrived and forced him down.

When they removed his mask, I recognized him.

Mark Price.

Daniel’s younger brother.

He had driven the van.

Lily suddenly pointed toward the end of the corridor.

“Victoria was here.”

“What?”

“She told the doctor to inject me.”

Warren grabbed Mark by the collar.

“Where did she go?”

Mark laughed through a split lip.

“You’re too late.”

Then smoke began pouring from the records room.

Victoria had set fire to the clinic’s files.

If those records burned, years of illegal admissions and forged diagnoses would disappear.

But Lily pulled something from beneath her hospital gown.

A small black memory card.

“I took it from the doctor’s desk.”

“What’s on it?” I asked.

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She looked at Dr. Mercer.

“Everything.”