Chapter 17
The emergency lighting blinked intermittently, giving the hallway a fun-house look that was anything but enjoyable. Noah made his way through the hospital, weapon drawn, aware of every door he passed and the unknown that might be tucked away inside it.
His money was on Patel for the bad guy. The administrator had access to Hannah’s office and motive coming out his eyeballs.
Either he was in on the scam to steal nearly half a million dollars in drugs from the hospital or he was complacent in something else.
The buck stopped with him, at the very least, though Noah thought he was likely far more culpable than that.
He made his way into a stairwell, brighter than the hallway before it, and arrived on the second floor.
He checked his sister’s office first. The door was locked, and he wondered if it had been since she died, dismissing the idea as unlikely.
Hell, maybe they’d already hired her replacement and he was about to go through the filing cabinet of new employee number three hundred and six.
He used a hairpin and the multi-tool from his pocket to pick the lock, letting himself inside. Lightning flashed outside the window, illuminating an angry purple sky, and he marveled at the quick change in the weather.
Another storm is the least of your worries.
He moved behind the desk, trying each of the drawers and picking the lock on the only one that wouldn’t open.
This was definitely his sister’s desk, with matching blue office supplies, a document scanner at a perfect forty-five-degree angle, and a puppy desk calendar, and for a moment he missed her so acutely he thought he might scream.
He closed his eyes and took several deliberate breaths before moving to a tall file cabinet.
The drawers weren’t even full, with just a few hanging file folders full of requisition forms, time-off requests, and mailing labels.
He cursed under his breath. If he was going to get into Lizzie’s records, he’d have to get into her computer account.
Would it have access to the emergency generators?
He started up the machine, the quiet hum of the fan surprising him.
Billing was apparently a very important hospital function.
He shook his head, a password screen popping up to greet him.
Buttercup.
Lizzie’s beloved dog who died right before Lizzie graduated from college. He hit enter, smiling when the machine continued booting up. She was predictable, that was for sure.
His eyes went back to the document scanner.
Given that the file cabinet was empty, she must scan all of her papers into the computer—including the letter she received from Joe Fielding.
A quick browse through her file structure and he found the scanning program along with its associated images.
Again his sister’s love for organization proved supremely helpful.
He found the letter filed under Personal & Confidential.
It was identical to the one at Hannah’s house, except this one had a handwritten note scrawled across the top.
It read, “Now they’ll have to answer me.
” Joe Fielding, no doubt referring to the administrators he believed were involved in the missing drugs.
He narrowed his eyes. Lizzie’s boss and lover, Eric Manning, was one of those addressed in the letter.
He thought of Hannah’s earlier comment when she read the letter Joe had written.
Why didn’t he tell me?
He always tells me everything.
Wasn’t that what lovers did? Spouses and significant others? If Lizzie’s boyfriend was involved and he knew she was aware of the letter, he would be under a great deal of pressure to keep her quiet. Joe Fielding had died without pointing a finger or even blowing the whistle on the drug scheme.
“Lizzie was the only one left who knew,” he whispered.
A noise in the hallway made his head snap up. Footsteps. Had Hannah come looking for him though he’d told her not to, or was someone else in the building?
You already know someone else is here.
Hannah’s open office door and the warm cup of coffee proved that.
Another office lay beyond Lizzie’s like an old-time supervisor’s to a secretary’s, the door open. Noah moved into it, drawing his weapon as he moved behind a tall plant and flattened his body against the wall. He left the door open as he’d found it and waited.
He heard a key in the lock of Lizzie’s office door and it opened, heavy breathing like the intruder had run hard. The chair squeaked and rolled. “What the fuck?” said a man’s voice.
Noah winced. He’d left the computer on.
“Who’s in here?” the man asked.
The chair rolled again, more slowly this time. Noah trained his weapon at the open doorway of the inner office. The distant sound of someone running reached his ears. Was someone else coming to join the intruder or had the intruder taken off?
He moved to the doorway, training his weapon at Lizzie’s desk chair. It was empty. He ran to the hallway, straining his ears to hear as he went in pursuit, his legs pumping beneath him as he ran. He rounded a corner just as the man went through a doorway at the other end of the hall.
Noah was fast, his body well-trained. The doorway was a stairwell and he pushed through it, ready to take a shot if he needed to, but finding the stairwell empty.
They were on the second floor. According to Hannah’s information, there were patient rooms upstairs and a flooded first floor below them.
He climbed the stairs two at a time, reaching the third of four floors.
The bastard could be anywhere.
He pushed out onto the third floor and withdrew a small CS gas gun from his pants pocket and settled it in his left hand, keeping his Glock in his right. He shot a canister of tear gas into the stairwell behind him and closed the door, assuring the tango wouldn’t be able to use it to escape.
One by one, he cleared each hospital room.
A terrific thunderstorm now raged outside the windows, his search punctuated by bright flashes of lightning and loud, booming thunder.
Most of the rooms were classic doubles with the privacy curtains pulled back.
He checked under the beds and in the bathroom and moved on.
Then he got to a big room. It was far larger, several of the privacy curtains pulled. Noah shot a tear gas cartridge into the room, went into the hall, and waited, his Glock trained on the exit.
No one came out.
He cleared the rest of the rooms quickly and entered the second stairwell at the opposite end of the building. He emerged onto the fourth floor and checked rooms, again arriving at one that was larger than the others. He shot tear gas into the room and waited.
The door opened and a man came flying out, clutching his eyes and coughing.
“Freeze!” said Noah, but the man ran past him toward the clear stairwell Noah had just used. Noah fired into the man’s leg and he fell to the ground, quickly scrambling up again. “Freeze!” he yelled again.
This son of a bitch is going to make me kill him.
He shot for the man’s legs again, missing him completely as the tango ran. If he was willing to take a shot at the man’s torso, he would make it, but the shot could be lethal and Noah wasn’t prepared to lose this man and whatever he might know about Lizzie’s death.
He hesitated.
The man pushed into the stairwell at the opposite side of the hospital. This time Noah was on him, close enough to hear his footfalls, the fresh blood on the concrete like a well-marked trail. They were going up again, one final steel door opening onto the roof.
The man was running full speed toward the edge.
“Stop!” yelled Noah.
The man skidded to a stop as if obeying him and backed up to the knee wall surrounding the rooftop. He held up a hand toward Noah, now just fifteen feet away. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll jump!” the man said, squinting, his eyes red and crying.
Noah froze, raising his hands toward the angry sky. The wind on the rooftop was whipping at his body and he feared the other man would be blown right off the edge. “Be careful of the wind,” he called out.
The man laughed. “You shot me in the leg, now you don’t want me to get hurt? Who are you, anyway?”
“Lizzie Ryker’s brother.”
The man’s eyes went wide. He put one foot on the knee wall.
“What are you doing?” Noah demanded.
He put the other foot on the knee wall, his arms extended at his sides as he came to a stand. “I loved her. I want you to know that.”
That’s when Noah recognized him. This man was at Lizzie’s funeral, had stayed to himself, crying in a corner. “Eric Manning.”
“I wanted to marry her.”
“But you killed her instead.”
His eyes were pleading. “No! They wanted me to, but I couldn’t.”
Noah’s finger twitched on his gun. “You were stealing drugs from the hospital.”
“No. I didn’t do that.”
“You did.”
“I looked the other way. I was paid not to pay attention.”
“You killed my sister.”
“No! I loved her.”
“Who did it, then?”
Manning looked over the edge and Noah thought he was going to lose him. The slightest movement would send him falling to his death.
“Tell me who!” Noah bellowed.
At that moment, lightning struck the HVAC unit on the rooftop with a sound like a freight train hitting the ground.
Sparks flew everywhere, Noah reflexively covering his head and jerking away.
Time slowed so it was barely moving at all, his mouth forming the word no as he watched Manning lose his balance and fall from the knee wall.
Noah ran to the side, another flash of lightning illuminating the body as it rose to the top of the water below.