Chapter 2 - Shadows in the Glass
The Intensive Care Unit was a landscape of blue light, rhythmic clicks, and the low, mechanical wheeze of respirators.
Through the glass window of Bay 4, Miles watched the slow, mechanical rise and fall of Emily’s chest. Her face was almost unrecognizable—swollen, pale as bleached bone, bruised purple across the left cheekbone and eye socket. White medical tape held a plastic tube in her mouth, and half a dozen IV lines snaked from overhead pumps into the back of her hands and neck.
He stood there, his hand pressed against the cool glass, feeling the faint vibration of his own blood pumping through the intravenous lines inside the room, fighting to keep her heart beating.
Behind him, the heavy wooden door of the ICU waiting area creaked open.
Marcus Vance—not the doctor, but Marcus Sterling, the chief legal counsel for Wilson Biotech—stepped into the dim corridor. He was sixty, silver-haired, impeccably groomed, and held a leather briefcase in one gloved hand.
"Miles," Sterling murmured, walking up beside his client. He didn't look at the woman on the bed; he looked at Miles’ pale, drawn face. "I came as soon as Jennifer called. We have a situation."
"Is it the board?" Miles asked without moving his eyes from Emily’s bruised face.
"The board can be handled," Sterling said calmly. "They're nervous about the stock price dropping if the news leaks that you've abandoned the Biotech launch event, but I can stall them. No, the issue is much more immediate. It’s about the accident."
Miles turned his head slowly. "What about it?"
Sterling opened his briefcase, pulled out a thin black folder, and handed a sheet of paper to Miles. It was a printout of an initial police dispatch report from the Chicago Police Department's 1st District.
"Your sister didn't just step off a curb into traffic, Miles," Sterling said, dropping his voice to a whisper. "The vehicle that struck her was a black, unregistered Ford SUV with tinted windows. Witnesses say the car mounted the sidewalk near the corner of 14th and Michigan. It hit her from behind, knocked her into a lamppost, and then reversed and sped off down an alley."
Miles felt his skin turn to ice. "Hit and run?"
"Worse," Sterling replied. "Look at the time of the call. 3:15 PM. Five minutes before the collision, Emily’s landlord in Pilsen called 911 to report three men breaking down the front door of her apartment. They ransacked the place. Cut open the mattresses, smashed the furniture, turned everything upside down."
Miles looked back through the glass at his sister. Her small, broken body looked impossibly fragile against the white hospital sheets.
"Why?" Miles demanded, his jaw clenching until the muscles thrilled with pain. "She’s a seamstress, Marcus! She lives in a two-room apartment in Pilsen! She fixes clothes for extra money! Why would three men break into her house and run her down in broad daylight?"
"I don't know yet," Sterling admitted. "But there’s something else. When the police searched her purse at the scene of the accident, they didn't find a wallet, money, or credit cards. They found a single flash drive wrapped in a piece of electrical tape, tucked into the lining of her coat. And a slip of paper with a handwritten address."
"Whose address?"
Sterling looked at Miles directly. "Your private residence in Winnetka."
Miles took a step back, his back hitting the cold concrete wall of the hallway.
Emily hadn't been running away from him. She had been coming to find him.
Before Miles could speak, the heavy double doors at the end of the ICU hallway clicked unlocked. Two men in dark winter coats stepped through. They didn't look like hospital staff. One was thick-set with a broken nose and a shaved head; the other was thin, pale, with a long leather jacket and a small, silver pin shaped like a coiled snake on his lapel.
They didn't look at the nurses. They walked directly toward Bay 4, their eyes fixed on the glass window.
Miles moved before he even consciously decided to. He stepped away from the wall, placing himself directly in the center of the corridor, blocking their path to Emily's room.
"Can I help you?" Miles asked, his voice ringing out sharp, metallic, dangerous.
The thick-set man stopped ten feet away. His hands were shoved deep into his coat pockets. "Wrong hallway, pal. Looking for the elevator."
"The elevator is behind you," Sterling said smoothly, stepping up beside Miles, his hand slipping inside his coat toward his private phone. "And this floor is restricted to immediate family."
The thin man in the leather jacket looked past Miles, his sharp blue eyes scanning the dark room where Emily lay. Then his gaze dropped to Miles’ face, recognizing him instantly.
"Miles Wilson," the thin man said, a faint, ugly smile playing across his lips. "The big tech savior. What are you doing down here in the dirt with the common folk?"
"This is my sister's room," Miles said, taking one step forward, closing the distance between them. In the high-stakes boardrooms of Manhattan and London, Miles was known as an absolute predator—a man who destroyed competitors without raising his voice. Now, that same dark, terrifying energy radiated off him in waves. "And if you take one more step toward that door, you will not leave this building on your own two feet."
The thin man’s smile flickered. He looked at the security cameras mounted on the ceiling, then back at Miles.
"She shouldn't have taken things that don't belong to her, Wilson," the thin man whispered softly. "Tell her when she wakes up... if she wakes up... that Mr. Vance doesn't like loose ends."
"Vance?" Miles repeated, the name striking him like a bolt of lightning. "Dr. Vance?"
The thin man didn't answer. He turned on his heel, motioned to his partner, and the two of them walked quickly back toward the fire exit stairs, the heavy door slamming shut behind them with a loud bang.
Miles turned to Sterling, his chest heaving, his pulse hammering in his ears.
"Get security up here now," Miles growled. "Hire private guards—twelve of them. Put six at this door, six downstairs. No one gets on this floor without my personal authorization."
"Miles," Sterling warned, pulling out his phone. "Who is Vance?"
May you like
Miles looked back through the glass at Emily.
"The doctor," Miles whispered, his mind racing through the web of connections. "The doctor who just took my blood."
