Chapter 5 - The Missing Nurse
The nurse’s name was Rebecca Lane.
She had worked at St. Augustine Medical Center for six years.
Her employment record was spotless.
She also could not be found.
Gabriel dispatched security to every floor.
Marcus demanded the police be called.
Gabriel had already done it.
Detective Samuel Price arrived forty minutes later.
By then, Isabella had stopped pretending to cry.
She sat inside a locked conference room with her attorney on speakerphone and refused to answer questions.
Khloe remained under observation.
Marcus was not allowed near her unless she requested him.
She did not.
Detective Price came to her bedside.
“I need you to tell me exactly what Isabella said before the assault.”
Khloe repeated everything she remembered.
Then she paused.
“There was one thing.”
“What?”
“She said she was informed.”
“Informed about what?”
“The baby.”
“My marriage.”
“Maybe the trust.”
Price wrote it down.
“Did she ever threaten your child before tonight?”
“No.”
“Did your husband ever tell you she had contacted him?”
Khloe looked through the glass wall.
Marcus stood outside.
Alone.
“Yes.”
Price looked up.
“When?”
“About two months ago.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me Isabella was having trouble accepting that their professional relationship had ended.”
“Professional?”
Khloe almost smiled.
“That was his word.”
Price closed his notebook.
“I’ll speak with him.”
A few minutes later, Gabriel entered carrying Rebecca Lane’s personnel file.
“She’s been found.”
“Where?”
“Parking level four.”
Khloe’s heartbeat accelerated.
“Is she okay?”
“She was locked inside a storage room.”
“She says someone took her hospital badge.”
Detective Price returned.
“Who?”
Gabriel answered.
“She never saw the person’s face.”
Rebecca had been struck from behind shortly after eight that evening.
When she woke, her badge was gone.
That badge had been used to open Khloe’s medical records.
Price frowned.
“Isabella was photographed at the gala at eight fifteen.”
“So she couldn’t have done it,” Khloe said.
“Not alone.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
Exactly.
Marcus entered before anyone could stop him.
“There’s another person.”
Everyone looked at him.
Marcus appeared exhausted.
“I should have told you sooner.”
Khloe stared at him.
“That sentence is becoming a habit.”
Marcus accepted it.
“Three weeks ago, Isabella sent me a photograph.”
“What photograph?”
He unlocked his phone.
It showed Khloe leaving a prenatal clinic.
Someone had taken the picture from across the street.
Khloe felt sick.
“She was following me?”
“I thought she was trying to scare me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the message beneath the picture was worse.”
Marcus enlarged the screenshot.
Beneath Khloe’s photograph were six words.
You should verify whose baby it is.
Khloe looked at him.
Then she understood.
“You believed her.”
Marcus’s silence gave him away.
Khloe’s voice broke for the first time.
May you like
“You actually believed her.”
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