Chapter 4 - Night Shift at Lakeview General
The sterile fluorescent lights of Lakeview General Medical Center hummed with their usual frantic, sleep-deprived energy at 2:15 AM.
An ambulance siren wailed in the ambulance bay outside, but inside the second-floor nurses' station, things were relatively quiet. Too quiet.
Claire walked down the linoleum-floored corridor wearing a fresh set of scrubs provided by one of the estate housekeepers. Her ID badge clipped to her pocket felt heavier than usual, as if it carried the weight of an invisible target painted squarely on her back.
Walking a few paces behind her, dressed in a tailored dark overcoat with his collar turned up to obscure his face, was Roman Mercer. To any passing nurse or doctor, he looked like a concerned relative of a patient. To Claire, he felt like a shadow she couldn't shake.
"Stay back," Claire whispered over her shoulder as they approached the staff lockers. "If Dr. Henderson sees me walking in with a mob boss, I’m going to have to explain a lot more than my tardiness."
"Dr. Henderson owes two hundred thousand dollars in gambling debts to a bookmaker who answers to my syndicate," Roman replied smoothly, his hands tucked into his coat pockets as he scanned the hallway. "He won't ask questions."
Claire stopped, turning to glare at him. "Do you own everyone in this city?"
"I own the debts that keep them cooperative," Roman corrected without a trace of remorse. "Now open your locker. We are looking for the device that accessed your bank account."
Claire pulled her locker key from her pocket, sliding it into the small brass padlock. The door swung open with a metallic squeak, revealing her spare scrubs, a crumpled box of granola bars, a paperback novel, and her personal smartphone plugged into a portable battery pack.
She unplugged the phone and held it up. "My phone has been with me all day. You checked it at the estate."
"Not your phone," Roman said, stepping closer and peering into the narrow metal space. His hand reached past her shoulder, his fingers brushing the back wall of the locker where a series of spare keys and union pamphlets were stacked.
He tapped the metal wall with his knuckles.
Clack.
Hollow sound.
Claire frowned. "What is that?"
Without answering, Roman pressed his thumb against the lower corner of the metal partition. A small magnetic panel popped open, revealing a tiny, credit-card-sized cryptographic hardware wallet tucked neatly into the narrow gap between lockers.
Claire gasped, stepping back. "I swear I didn't put that there."
Roman picked up the tiny device with a gloved hand, turning it over in his palm. A small blue LED light blinked once.
"This is an encrypted cold storage wallet," Roman said softly, his voice dropping into a lethal register. "It holds the cryptographic keys to the shell company that wired the fifty thousand dollars into your account. Furthermore..." He pulled a small tech scanner from his coat pocket, plugging the wallet into it for a fraction of a second. "...it has your staff login credentials hashed into its firmware."
Claire felt the room spin. The floor beneath her feet seemed to tilt.
"Somebody planted it," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Somebody on this floor. They didn't just frame me for kidnapping your son—they framed me for stealing corporate funds from your own syndicate."
Before Roman could reply, the emergency intercom crackled to life overhead.
“Code Blue, Trauma Bay Two. Code Blue, Trauma Bay Two. Dr. Henderson, report to Trauma immediately.”
At the same moment, the heavy fire doors at the end of the hallway slammed open.
Three armed men in tactical gear, wearing black ski masks and carrying suppressed submachine guns, stepped out from the stairwell.
Claire froze.
Roman’s hand moved with lightning speed, shoving Claire behind his broad frame as he drew a heavy, matte-black Glock from a concealed holster beneath his coat.
"Get down!" Roman commanded.
The first masked intruder raised his weapon.
May you like
Bang. Bang.
Two deafening gunshots shattered the fluorescent lights above them, plunging the hallway into chaos as emergency alarms began to shriek through the hospital.
