Chapter 4 - THE HOSPITAL VISITOR
Red lights flashed along the hospital ceiling.
An automated voice ordered everyone to remain calm.
Nurses began closing patient-room doors.
Officer Mercer drew his weapon.
“Stay with Sophie.”
“What happened?”
“Do not leave the room.”
He ran toward the stairwell.
I rushed inside Sophie’s room.
She was awake.
Her face was pale beneath the bandage around her head.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here.”
“What is that sound?”
“Just an alarm.”
I locked the door.
My hands would not stop shaking.
Rachel’s last words repeated in my mind.
They found me.
Sophie watched my face.
“Is Uncle Preston coming?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I wished I believed it.
Someone knocked.
Three slow taps.
I did not move.
“Mrs. Hayes?”
A man’s voice came through the door.
“I’m with hospital security.”
“Show me your identification through the window.”
There was a pause.
Then a plastic badge appeared against the glass.
The photograph showed a middle-aged man.
The name beneath it read THOMAS REED.
I looked toward the nurses’ station.
No one was there.
“Why are you here?”
“We need to move your daughter.”
“Why?”
“There is smoke on this floor.”
I smelled nothing.
“Send a nurse.”
“Mrs. Hayes, we need to move now.”
His voice was becoming impatient.
Sophie gripped the blanket.
“Mommy.”
I reached for the emergency call button.
The man tried the handle.
Once.
Then again.
“Open the door.”
I pressed the call button repeatedly.
No one answered.
The handle jerked harder.
The lock began to shake.
I pushed a chair beneath it.
“Step away from the door!”
He stopped.
Then the glass window cracked.
Sophie screamed.
The man had struck it with something metal.
I grabbed the rolling table and pushed it against the door.
The second blow shattered the window.
A gloved hand reached through.
I picked up a glass water pitcher and brought it down against his wrist.
He shouted.
The hand vanished.
Then footsteps pounded down the hallway.
Officer Mercer appeared from the stairwell.
“Police!”
The man ran.
Mercer chased him.
I held Sophie while she cried into my chest.
Minutes later, nurses returned.
The fire alarm stopped.
There had been no fire.
Someone had pulled an alarm on the first floor.
Mercer came back alone.
“He escaped through a service stairwell.”
“Who was he?”
“Not hospital security.”
I showed him the name from the badge.
Mercer contacted the hospital.
Thomas Reed had worked there once.
He had been fired three years earlier.
His current employer was Whitmore Protective Services.
My father’s private security company.
I felt sick.
“My father sent him.”
“We cannot say that yet.”
“Who else would?”
Mercer’s phone rang.
He listened for several seconds.
Then his expression changed.
“What is it?”
“The hotel technician restored part of the deleted footage.”
“Did it show Preston?”
“Not the impact.”
“Then what?”
“It shows someone entering the ballroom forty minutes before the accusation.”
“Who?”
Mercer turned the screen toward me.
My mother appeared in the image.
She was carrying Sophie’s denim jacket.
May you like
And behind her walked Cassandra.
The bride.
