Twice.
Then every light in the lobby went dark.
Someone screamed inside the hospital.
The sedan became a sealed black box. I heard Marcus curse under his breath, followed by the sound of a door slamming somewhere near the ambulance bay.
"Stay down," he ordered.
I dropped below the window line.
Rain hammered the roof. The darkness outside filled with movement—footsteps, hurried voices, the squeal of tires on wet pavement.
A flashlight beam swept across the windshield.
Then another.
"Who is that?" I whispered.
"Hospital security," Marcus said.
"How do you know?"
"I don't."
A hard object struck the rear window.
The glass cracked in a white spiderweb.
I screamed and covered my head.
Marcus opened his door and moved out into the rain. A second impact hit the window, but the reinforced glass held.
"Marcus!" Adrian shouted.
No answer came.
I crouched on the floor with my arms over my head. The dead phone lay beside my knee. I could feel the takeout bag pressing against my ankle, the paper soaked through from the rain.
Then something slid beneath the car door.
A white envelope.
The same kind I had seen in the video.
It stopped inches from my hand.
I did not touch it.
Outside, someone grabbed the front passenger door and pulled. The lock held. A voice shouted, "Open the vehicle!"
It was not Marcus's voice.
I reached for the envelope with the corner of the paper bag and pulled it toward me. The flap had already been opened. Inside was a single photograph.
It showed the Blue Lantern's lower cabinet.
The image had been taken from the same angle as the video, but this time the envelope was gone. In its place sat a small black notebook.
The notebook had a silver rectangular clasp.
My breath caught.
The ring.
The hand in the recording had worn a silver ring shaped like a narrow rectangle. I had assumed it belonged to the person planting the envelope. But the clasp on the notebook had the exact same shape.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written:
THE FIRST SWITCH WASN'T THE CUP.
A shadow moved across the cracked window.
I slid the photograph beneath my coat.
The rear door opened.
A man in a dark hospital security uniform leaned inside. His face was partly hidden by a surgical mask, but I recognized the narrow scar above his left eyebrow.
He had been standing near the emergency entrance when we arrived.
"Ms. Reed, come with me," he said.
"Where is Marcus?"
"He's being detained."
"By whom?"
The man reached for my arm.
I moved backward.
"Don't touch me."
His hand stopped in the air.
Behind him, Adrian appeared in the rain. He was pale, one hand still pressed to his side, but his other hand held a metal IV stand like a weapon.
"Step away from her," he said.
The security guard turned.
"You shouldn't be out of the treatment area."
"And you shouldn't be wearing a hospital badge that belongs to someone else."
The man's gaze flicked to the badge clipped over his chest.
That brief glance confirmed it.
He lunged through the open door.
Adrian swung the IV stand. It struck the guard's shoulder and sent him against the side of the sedan. The man recovered quickly and drove his fist into Adrian's injured side.
Adrian folded with a harsh breath.
I grabbed the envelope and shoved it into my apron pocket.
The guard reached toward me.
I snatched up the takeout bag and threw it at his face.
The container of mashed potatoes burst against his mask. He cursed and stumbled backward.
Adrian caught the edge of the door.
"Run."
I climbed out of the car.
The parking lot was chaos. Security lights flashed red across the wet pavement, and two nurses were dragging the injured officer behind a concrete pillar. Near the ambulance bay, Marcus was on his knees with his hands behind his head while another man in a dark jacket held a gun low beside his leg.
The man did not look like hospital security.
Neither did the woman standing beside him.
She wore a navy raincoat and held a plastic evidence bag in one hand. Inside it was the glass vial from the diner.
Except the vial was empty.
"Adrian!" she called. "You need to come with us."
Adrian stayed between me and the car.
"Identify yourself."
The woman raised an ID wallet, but she kept it too far away for me to read.
"Detective Laura Chen, St. Matthew's police."
The injured officer made a weak sound from behind the pillar.
"That's not Chen," he said. "Detective Chen has blonde hair."
The woman looked toward him.
That was enough.
Adrian grabbed my hand.
"Inside."
I nearly pulled away, but a gunshot cracked across the parking lot.
The bullet struck the sedan's hood.
I ran with him.
We crossed beneath the emergency canopy as another shot hit the concrete wall behind us. The nurse who had spoken to us earlier shoved open a side door and waved us through.
Marcus remained outside.
I turned back.
He was still on his knees, but the man with the gun had looked away. Marcus drove his shoulder into the man's legs. Both of them went down, and the evidence bag flew across the pavement.
The false detective fired again.
The sound vanished behind the closing door.
Adrian pushed me into a narrow service corridor. The hospital smelled of disinfectant and wet clothes. Alarms began sounding somewhere beyond the walls.
"Where is Marcus?" I asked.
"He can handle himself."
"You left him."
"I told him to keep you in the car."
"You don't get to abandon people and call it a plan."
Adrian leaned against the wall, breathing hard. Blood had soaked through his shirt now.
"You want the truth?"
"I want all of it."
"Then stop shouting and listen."
"Your associate tried to poison you. Someone is stalking me. My brother's phone is compromised. Mrs. Dalton says you brought the poison into the diner. And the evidence disappeared from your hospital room."
His eyes stayed on mine.
"Mrs. Dalton didn't make that call."
"How do you know?"
"Because she has been missing for forty-three minutes."
My anger faltered.
"What?"
"She left the Blue Lantern before the officers arrived. Her car was found behind the diner with the driver's door open."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't know whether she was a victim or part of the setup."
"And now?"
"Now I know the person using her voice wanted me to hear that accusation."
I thought of the hesitation in the call. The uneven breathing. The sound that had cut her off.
"She could have been forced to say it."
"Yes."
"Then you don't know."
"No."
At least he answered honestly.
The corridor lights flickered. A red emergency glow pulsed across Adrian's face.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small plastic evidence sleeve. Inside was a scrap of white paper, folded twice.
"You saw this before," he said.
I recognized the stained edge immediately.
"The receipt from booth seven."
"It was under the cup."
He unfolded it carefully.
On the back, written in blue ink, were three words:
ASK ABOUT SEVEN.
My pulse quickened.
"Booth seven?"
"Not the booth itself. The cabinet beneath the register."
I pulled the photograph from my apron and showed it to him.
His expression changed when he saw the black notebook.
"Where did you get that?"
"It was in the envelope someone pushed under the car."
"Did you open it?"
"No."
"Good."
"Why?"
"Because that notebook belonged to my sister."
The corridor seemed to narrow around us.
I had never heard Adrian mention a sister. In every article I had seen about him, there had been no family photographs, no interviews about his childhood, nothing beyond his company and his money.
"What does your sister have to do with the Blue Lantern?"
"She worked there six years ago."
I looked at the photograph again.
"The notebook was inside the cabinet?"
"She kept records."
"What kind of records?"
"Payments. Names. Dates."
"Illegal payments?"
"That was what she believed."
Adrian folded the receipt again.
"Three months before she died, she told me someone was using the Blue Lantern to move information. Not money. Information about construction bids, property purchases, people who could be pressured."
"That sounds like your business."
"It was."
"Was she a whistleblower?"
"She was going to be."
The words came out flat, as if he had repeated them too many times.
"Then what happened?"
"She was killed in a hit-and-run."
I stared at him.
"Six years ago?"
"Six years, four months, and nine days."
"Was it ruled an accident?"
"Yes."
"Do you think it was?"
"I know it wasn't."
A door opened at the end of the corridor.
The nurse stepped through and pulled it shut behind her. She had lost the calm expression she wore outside.
"You need to come with me," she said.
Adrian straightened. "Who are you?"
"I told you. I'm a nurse."
"You work in emergency?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
She hesitated.
Adrian moved closer to me.
The nurse glanced at the paper in his hand. "If you stay in this corridor, they'll find you."
"Who will?" I asked.
"Everyone who was paid to make sure the evidence never reached the lab."
Her eyes fixed on me.
"And everyone who believes you carried the original file out of the diner."
"I didn't carry anything."
"I know."
"Then why do they think I did?"
The nurse looked at Adrian.
"Because the person wearing Hannah's uniform took the notebook."
Adrian's hand tightened around the receipt.
"Where is the notebook now?" he asked.
The nurse did not answer.
A heavy bang echoed from the far end of the corridor.
Someone was trying the doors.
"There's a stairwell behind me," she said. "It leads to the old records basement. You can exit through the loading dock."
"Why help us?" Adrian asked.
"Because I saw what happened to the lab technician."
The bang came again, louder.
The nurse flinched.
"He was alive when they brought him in. He isn't now."
I looked at Adrian.
He had gone very still.
"Was he poisoned?" he asked.
"No. His throat was cut."
The emergency lights pulsed again.
A voice came through the locked door.
"Mr. Vale, open up. This is hospital security."
The nurse stepped toward the stairwell.
"We have maybe thirty seconds."
Adrian took the photograph from my hand and studied the notebook's clasp.
"What?" I asked.
"This isn't a photograph of the notebook."
I looked at the image.
The black cover, the silver clasp, the white envelope. Everything seemed clear.
He turned it over and held it beneath the red light.
"There is a reflection in the clasp."
At first, I could see nothing except a distorted streak of white. Then the angle shifted.
A face appeared in the metal.
A woman.
Her hair was pinned at the back of her neck.
Her jaw was turned slightly away from the camera.
But I knew the light blue uniform. I knew the black apron.
And I knew the silver rectangular ring on her hand.
"That's Mrs. Dalton," I whispered.
Adrian nodded.
"She was the one in the recording."
The locked door shook in its frame.
I looked toward the stairwell, then back at Adrian.
"If Mrs. Dalton planted the envelope, why did she call me?"
"Maybe she wanted you to believe she was warning you."
"Or maybe she was trying to help."
"Either way, someone knew we would find this photograph."
He handed it back to me.
The nurse opened the stairwell door.
"We have to go."
Adrian did not move.