flash
Dr. Arthur Hale’s face drained of color as the uniform steady green blips of the heart monitor illuminated the dark, sterile walls of Trauma Room 4. His stethoscope slipped from his pocket, hitting the linoleum with a hollow, plastic clatter. / Chapter 7 / 10

Chapter 7 - The Chase Through the RuinsCara clutched the small, cold piece of plastic in her palm as the heavy metal door of Room 412 shook under a violent kick from the hallway.

"Police! Open this door right now!" Detective Vance’s voice roared from the other side.

"Go!" Dominic yelled, shoving Cara toward the back corner of the room where a rusted, vertical fire escape ladder led upward into the darkness of the service shaft.

Lorenzo didn't waste a second. He hoisted the unconscious form of Vincent over his shoulder like a sack of grain, nodded once to Dominic, and vanished into the shadows of an intersecting maintenance tunnel alongside his masked enforcers.

With a final, terrified glance at Dominic—who was now sliding back down onto the blood-stained cot, deliberately smearing dirt and fresh crimson across his chest to look like a corpse once more—Cara scrambled up the vertical ladder.

Just as her boots cleared the hatch, the door to Room 412 crashed inward off its hinges.

"Clear the room!" Detective Vance shouted, bursting in with three tactical officers behind him, their flashlights cutting blinding arcs through the dusty air.

Vance stopped dead in his tracks in the center of the room.

On the iron cot, Dominic Russo lay motionless, his eyes half-closed, his chest covered in dried blood and artificial grime. The portable oxygen tank hissed empty beside him.

Vance rushed forward, pressing two fingers against Dominic’s carotid artery.

Silence. No pulse. Not a single flutter.

"He's dead," Vance muttered, his face twisting in bitter frustration as he stared down at the mafia boss. "Damn it... he died right here in the dirt."

One of the tactical officers shined his light toward the open ceiling hatch. "Detective, look! There's a ladder. Someone just went up there!"

Vance looked up, spotting a single drop of fresh blood on the metal rung—and a blue scrub pocket tag caught on a rusted bolt.

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The heavy silver fork slipped from my fingers, clattering sharply against the gold-rimmed porcelain of my dinner plate.

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The heavy mahogany door of the Fairmont Copley suite clicked shut with a muffled, expensive thud.

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Jennings, C. – RN.

Vance’s eyes burned with cold triumph. "It was the nurse. She didn't save him—she helped him escape, or she finished the job. Find her! Lock down the perimeter! Nobody leaves this hospital alive until I have that flash drive and that nurse!"

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