Chapter 10 - SOMEONE WAS HELPING THEM
Ruiz did not react.
That scared me more than if she had.
She simply stood.
“Interview over.”
Carla panicked.
“Wait!”
Ruiz opened the door.
“Austin, come with me.”
In the hallway, she turned to another detective.
“Nobody accesses Margaret Wentworth without my approval. Pull visitor logs. Calls. Body-cam records. Everything.”
Then she looked at me.
“You go back to the hospital.”
“What about Carla?”
“She stays.”
“What if she’s lying?”
“She probably is about something.”
“But not everything.”
“No.”
I studied her.
“You believe there’s a leak.”
“I believe pretending there isn’t one would be stupid.”
Back at the hospital, Irene was asleep.
I sat beside her and watched every person who entered the hallway.
Nurse.
Orderly.
Security guard.
Doctor.
Every uniform looked suspicious now.
At 4:37 a.m., the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then went dark.
Emergency lights came on.
A nurse stepped into the hallway.
“Generator should kick in.”
My heart began pounding.
I stood.
A man in blue scrubs turned the corner pushing a medication cart.
Something was wrong.
He didn’t look at room numbers.
He looked directly at Irene’s door.
“Hey.”
He kept walking.
“Hey!”
He moved faster.
I stepped into the hallway.
The man abandoned the cart and ran.
I chased him.
Barely thinking.
He slammed through a stairwell door.
I followed.
Three floors down, he threw something at me.
A metal tool.
It hit the wall beside my head.
I tackled him on the landing.
He punched me twice.
Hard.
Then hospital security piled in.
When police searched him, they found a syringe.
No label.
No hospital ID.
And a prepaid phone.
One outgoing number had been called seven times.
Detective Ruiz arrived forty minutes later.
She looked at the detained man.
“Name?”
He refused to speak.
I stared at his face.
Something about him seemed familiar.
Then Irene, brought down briefly in a wheelchair to identify him from a distance, made a sound.
“That’s Drew.”
The man looked at her.
That was enough.
The fake affair.
The planned accident.
The hospital.
All the same person.
Police searched his phone.
Most messages had been deleted.
But one remained.
M: Finish it tonight. C failed. F is leaving.
Ruiz looked at me.
“M could be Margaret.”
“Or anyone.”
“Yes.”
Then an officer approached her.
“We found something else.”
He held up the man’s wallet.
Inside was a police access card.
Not a badge.
A contractor credential.
He worked for the company that maintained digital evidence systems for the department.
The leak suddenly made sense.
Drew hadn’t needed a corrupt police officer.
He had access to internal networks.
Ruiz cursed.
Then her phone rang.
She answered.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She listened.
“When?”
She looked at me.
“We’re on our way.”
She hung up.
“What happened?”
“Your mother collapsed in custody.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
Ruiz stared at me.
“Because before she collapsed, Margaret told an officer she wanted to confess to something.”
My mouth went dry.
May you like
“What?”
“She said your father didn’t die of a heart attack.”
