Chapter 10 - THE EMPTY HOSPITAL CRIB
We reached St. Catherine’s in eleven minutes.
The protected wing smelled of smoke, but there was no fire.
Sprinklers had flooded the hall. Nurses shouted over alarms. Police searched stairwells while frightened families crowded near the elevators.
Leo’s crib was empty.
One guard lay unconscious beside the service door. The other had vanished.
My legs stopped working.
Lorenzo caught my arm before I hit the floor.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no.”
Detective Park found a security tablet. The camera feed showed a respiratory therapist pushing Leo’s crib toward the imaging department.
The therapist wore a mask and cap.
But the way she moved was familiar.
Celeste.
“She was in custody,” Park said.
“Someone released her,” Lorenzo answered.
The footage jumped ahead.
Celeste entered an elevator with Leo.
The elevator opened in the basement garage.
Bianca waited beside a black SUV.
The missing guard drove.
Matteo stared at the screen. “His name is Owen Bell. Bianca hired his sister at the trust office last year.”
Park issued an alert.
I looked at the timestamp. “They left four minutes ago.”
Lorenzo called every man who still answered to him, but Park grabbed his phone.
“No armed chase through the city.”
“She has my son.”
“And I want him alive.”
I forced myself to think.
Bianca did not want Leo dead immediately. She needed him alive long enough for medical incapacity to be declared, the trust transferred, and the evidence destroyed.
“The archive,” I said.
Lorenzo turned.
“She knows we found the flash drive. She knows the trust amendment can be disproved. She’ll go to the courthouse archive before the warrants reach it.”
Park looked at the map. The old courthouse stood twenty minutes south.
A traffic camera picked up the SUV heading in that direction.
We arrived to find the archive entrance open.
The night clerk was tied to a chair but conscious. Rows of metal shelves disappeared into the basement darkness.
Somewhere below us, a baby cried.
I ran toward the sound.
“Mara!” Park shouted.
I did not stop.
The cry came again, then cut off.
At the end of aisle fourteen, a portable crib sat beneath an emergency light.
Empty.
A phone had been placed inside, playing a recording of Leo.
“Trap,” Lorenzo said behind me.
The archive door slammed.
Gas hissed from the ceiling vents.
Matteo tried the handle. Locked.
Park covered her mouth with her sleeve. “Everyone down.”
Lorenzo kicked at the door.
I saw a red fire cabinet behind a shelf and shattered the glass with a binder. Inside was an emergency breathing hood.
Only one.
Lorenzo tried to put it over my head.
I pushed it toward Detective Park. “She has the radio.”
The gas made my vision blur.
Then Matteo pointed toward the floor.
A narrow maintenance hatch stood partly open beneath the bottom shelf.
We crawled through as the room disappeared behind gray fog.
The tunnel opened into the courthouse parking garage.
Bianca’s SUV was gone.
But on the concrete lay one of Leo’s blankets.
Pinned to it was a note.
BRING MARA ALONE TO THE ROSSI CHAPEL AT MIDNIGHT.
May you like
Underneath, in smaller writing:
OR THE BABY STOPS BREATHING FOR GOOD.
