Chapter 2 - THE DEAD MAN'S ESCAPE
Elena stopped me before I reached the door.
"We can't rush in," she whispered. "They're between us and the patient."
My palms felt wet. I could hear Carmine pacing in the treatment room, his shoes striking the floor with the measured irritation I knew so well. He had tormented me for dropping plates and standing in the wrong doorway. Now the thought of his hands anywhere near Gabriel made me sick.
"The oxygen room connects to the recovery bay," Elena said. "Another door. We can reach him without crossing the operating theater."
She knew the corridors. I knew the furniture. Together we moved past stacked carts, around a broken sterilizer, and into a narrow equipment room that had once held tanks. A high window showed the bottoms of rain-streaked shrubs outside. Every light was off except one small emergency bulb.
Elena eased open the far door.
Gabriel was where I'd left him, sheet folded beneath his chin, skin waxen under the cold ceiling light. The steel table's wheels were unlocked now. Beside it waited the black body bag.
I had never hated an object before. I hated that bag.
Elena went straight to his side. She checked his pulse carefully, listened to his breathing, and drew the sheet back to examine the wounds that had been cleaned and dressed after surgery.
"He's alive," she confirmed. Her voice broke on the second word. "Very slow circulation, very shallow breathing. We need him out of here now."
I almost laughed with relief. Instead I burst into tears.
"Not yet," she told me, squeezing my shoulder. "He needs us focused."
She switched on the room's spare monitor. A faint rhythm appeared. It was much slower than I expected, but it was there. Elena adjusted the oxygen mask over his face and covered him with warmed blankets from a cabinet.
"What can I do?"
"Watch the door. Tell me if anything changes."
I stood guard while she worked. Across the corridor, a burst of angry voices rose and fell. Sloane was complaining about paperwork. Carmine wanted the body moved. Neither had noticed the monitor was running again.
Gabriel's eyes fluttered.
I rushed forward.
"No," Elena whispered. "Don't crowd him."
His gaze seemed to find me through a thick fog. I thought I saw recognition, but his eyes closed almost immediately.
"He's trying," Elena said. "That's good. But don't assume he's safe."
I remembered his warning about the blue cabinet. "Can we look for whatever they gave him?"
"Later. We need a doctor who isn't part of this house."
A faint tapping came from the service door. Three quick beats, a pause, then two. Elena had arranged the signal with Dr. Desai on the phone. But the gate was a hundred yards away, and no stranger could have crossed the grounds that quickly.
"Don't open it," I whispered.
The tapping came again.
"Elena?" someone called softly. "It's Owen."
I recognized the voice. Elena opened the door a fraction.
Owen stood outside, rain in his hair and his security jacket unzipped. He looked barely old enough to work the night shift.
"The gate cameras have been turned toward the east driveway," he said. "Carmine wants everyone looking for a maid in a gray coat."
I glanced down. I was wearing my gray coat.
"I saw you go into the chapel," he continued. "I figured you weren't stealing jewelry. Then I saw Sloane bring out a body bag and heard there was no death investigation. I don't understand it."
I stepped aside so he could see the monitor.
Owen stared. "Jesus."
"He's alive," Elena said. "And we're getting him out."
"Carmine's men have orders to stop any vehicle leaving."
"Can you help us?" I asked.
He looked at Gabriel, then at me. "I have a daughter."
"I know. Her name's Penny. You showed me her picture."
He swallowed. "If I cross Carmine and this goes wrong, she'll grow up without a father."
I wanted to beg. Instead I said, "You don't owe Gabriel your life, Owen. You don't owe me yours, either. But Carmine is trying to kill a man who can't defend himself. That won't stop being true because we do nothing."
For a long moment he said nothing. Then he removed his security badge and placed it on the table.
"There's a delivery ambulance in the old coach house," he said. "It was purchased for private events. No medical crew, but it has a stretcher and lights. If I drive it through the west service gate, they might think I'm taking equipment to storage."
"Mira's arriving with another vehicle," Elena said. "She can meet us there."
"I'll move the cameras," Owen replied. "You have eight minutes before my supervisor notices."
He left.
Elena pulled a rolling stretcher from the equipment room. With careful, practiced movements she transferred Gabriel onto it while I steadied his shoulders and kept the blanket from catching beneath the wheels. Every small jolt made me afraid his heartbeat would vanish. He was heavy, frighteningly still, and more vulnerable than I had ever imagined him.
As we turned toward the side passage, a voice filled the corridor.
"Nurse Reyes."
Sloane stood at the far end, one hand inside his coat.
Elena froze.
"I told you to leave," he said.
"Your patient is alive," she answered. "Call emergency services and get out of our way."
He glanced at the monitor and gave a small, bitter laugh.
"You don't understand what you've involved yourselves in."
"Then explain it to the police," I said.
Sloane's attention shifted to me. "You were supposed to be home."
"And he was supposed to be dead?"
His mouth tightened. In the second before he moved, I noticed his hand was empty. He wasn't reaching for a gun. He was reaching for the red emergency shutoff that sealed the secure clinic doors.
I hurled a metal tray across the hall. It struck the wall beside his head. He flinched. Elena pushed the stretcher past me, and I slammed the equipment-room door behind us.
The red light over the clinic exit blinked. Locks began clicking along the corridor.
"Move!" Elena shouted.
We reached the chapel stairs as the last automatic door started closing. I shoved a laundry cart between the frame and the wall. Its wheels buckled, but the metal held long enough for the stretcher to pass.
The staircase was too steep.
Gabriel could not survive being carried down it by two exhausted women. I felt panic rising, then saw the old freight lift beside the landing. Years ago it had delivered flowers and communion wine to the chapel. I had polished its brass handle every Saturday.
"This way," I said.
The lift groaned under the stretcher's weight. Elena kept one hand on Gabriel's oxygen mask while I pressed the switch. We descended in terrifying slowness. Above us came shouting and the clatter of boots.
The lift opened near the service yard. Owen was waiting with the ambulance's rear doors wide.
"Hurry," he said. "Carmine knows something's happening."
We pushed Gabriel inside. Elena climbed in beside him. I was about to follow when Owen caught my arm.
"The west gate code changed," he said. "Security has to approve the vehicle now."
"Can you get through?"
"Maybe. I need a reason they believe."
I looked toward the mansion, where the first-floor windows glowed with lights. Somewhere inside, men were dividing a fortune belonging to a man who still drew breath.
"Tell them you're taking the body to the funeral home," I said.
Owen looked horrified. "Matilda—"
"That's what they're expecting. The body bag is in the back. If they ask to look, let them see it. Gabriel will be beneath the blankets."
Elena understood at once. She folded the empty bag over a padded stretcher by the rear doors, creating a familiar outline. Then she pulled the partition curtain across Gabriel's bed.
"It won't fool a careful examiner," she said.
"Carmine doesn't want an examiner," I answered.
Owen climbed into the driver's seat. I crouched beside Elena, my knees pressed against the stretcher frame. The engine rumbled awake.
At the gate, a guard shone a flashlight through the front window. I heard Owen call out that Carmine had ordered the transfer moved up. The guard questioned him. Owen swore with exactly the irritation I'd heard from him when deliveries arrived late.
Then a second guard opened the rear door.
Cold air rushed in.
He saw the covered shape beneath the black bag. A corner of the zipper gleamed in the light. I held my breath so completely that my chest hurt.
"That's him?" the guard asked.
"Do you want to check?" Owen shouted from the front. "Because Sloane told me to get this thing off the property before the press arrives."
The guard hesitated.
"No," he said finally. "Go."
The doors slammed. The ambulance rolled forward, bumped over the threshold, and turned onto the road.
Elena let out a trembling breath. Then she checked Gabriel's pulse again and spoke sharply into her phone.
"Mira, we're clear. Meet us at the designated place. He's unstable."
I pulled back the curtain enough to see Gabriel's face. His brow had tightened, and his lips moved soundlessly around the oxygen mask.
"You're out," I told him. "You're away from them."
His eyes opened a fraction.
"Carmine," he whispered.
"We know."
He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "Not... alone."
The ambulance hit a pothole. Elena steadied the monitor while I leaned closer.
"Who else?"
He struggled to form a word.
"Lucia."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Lucia was his younger sister, the only family member Gabriel spoke of with uncomplicated affection. She had called the mansion every Sunday. He had been planning to visit her after the warehouse dispute ended.
"Do you mean Lucia helped them?" I asked.
He closed his eyes. "Warn... Lucia."
Then he slipped back into silence.
I looked at Elena. Neither of us could tell whether he had named an accomplice or a target.
Outside, the city was beginning to pale at the edges. We were crossing the river when my phone vibrated for the first time that night.
An unknown number had sent me a photograph.
It showed the empty steel table in the medical wing.
Under it was a message: I KNOW YOU TOOK HIM.
A second message followed.
BRING HIM BACK BEFORE SUNRISE, OR EVERYONE WHO HELPED YOU DIES.
I turned the screen toward Elena. She stared at it, then covered the phone with her hand as though the words might hurt Gabriel if he saw them.
"Don't answer," she said.
But my fear had already changed shape. Until then, I'd believed we had escaped a room.
May you like
Now I understood we had escaped into a city where Carmine could reach us almost anywhere.
And behind us, the man who had ordered Gabriel's funeral was discovering that the dead did not always stay buried.
