Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN IN THE BLUE SCRUBS
The hospital locked down at 11:41 p.m.
Every exterior door switched to badge-only access.
Security officers moved floor by floor.
State troopers took the stairs.
No one was allowed to leave the neonatal wing without identification.
Renee Dalton had entered the hospital thirty-five minutes earlier.
No camera showed her leaving.
That meant she was either still inside or someone knew how to erase her exit.
Sarah begged us to move the twins.
"Put them somewhere she doesn't know."
The neonatal physician, Dr. Helen Wu, shook her head.
"They are safest here medically."
"She almost killed Grace."
"We don't know what was in that syringe yet."
"Does it matter?"
Dr. Wu looked at her.
"No."
Her voice softened.
"It doesn't."
She ordered both twins moved to a restricted isolation room at the far end of the unit.
Their chart names were temporarily changed to coded identifiers in the medication system.
Only six staff members received access.
One of them was me.
I did not ask for that responsibility.
I accepted it anyway.
Lily remained with Sarah under a state trooper's protection.
At 12:08 a.m., Ben found the first trace of Renee.
Her abandoned scrub top lay in a linen cart on the second floor.
Her copied badge was inside the pocket.
A black sweater and jeans were missing from an employee locker nearby.
"She changed clothes," Ben said.
"Whose locker?"
"A lab technician named Chloe Martin."
"Does Chloe know her?"
"Says no."
"Any cameras?"
"Not inside changing areas."
The hallway camera showed a dark-haired woman leaving the locker room wearing a baseball cap.
At first, nobody believed it was Renee.
Then Sergeant Shaw enlarged the image.
The woman had tucked blonde hair beneath a dark wig.
The small scar under her mouth was still visible.
Renee walked directly toward the pediatric floor.
I felt cold.
"Lily."
We ran again.
Sarah's room was empty.
The trooper who had been posted outside was unconscious in a chair near the supply alcove.
Not badly injured.
Drugged, as we later learned, after accepting a sealed coffee from someone dressed as dietary staff.
Lily's wheelchair was gone.
Sarah's IV tubing trailed across the floor.
A smear of blood marked the doorway where the line had ripped from her arm.
I thought they had been taken.
Then I heard a crash from the chapel corridor.
Sarah appeared at the far end, barefoot, one hand against the wall.
"Claire!"
I ran to her.
"Where's Lily?"
Sarah could barely breathe.
"She told me you came for her."
"Who?"
"Renee."
My stomach dropped.
Sarah gripped my arm.
"She said Grace had gotten worse and that you wanted Lily to come say goodbye."
I felt sick.
A lie designed for a child.
Cruel enough to make her obey without screaming.
"Which way?"
Sarah pointed toward the service elevators.
Security sealed the ground-floor exits.
The elevators were stopped between floors.
We searched stairwells, closets, family rooms, empty offices.
Every minute stretched.
I kept imagining Lily's bandaged feet.
She could not run.
She could barely stand.
Renee had chosen the easiest child in the hospital to carry away.
At 12:19 a.m., a janitor on the fourth floor called security.
He had found a wheelchair near the old rehabilitation wing.
One of the footrests was smeared with fresh blood.
Lily's bandage had caught on a metal edge.
The fourth floor had been partly closed for renovation.
Plastic sheeting covered the hallway.
Half the lights were off.
Construction equipment created blind corners everywhere.
Sergeant Shaw ordered me to stay behind.
I did not argue because Sarah was already trying to follow.
"You are not going up there," I told her.
"That's my daughter."
"And you can barely stand."
"Move."
"No."
She looked at me with raw fury.
"If that were your child—"
"I would want someone to stop me from collapsing in a stairwell while police searched."
Her eyes filled.
"I left her alone for three days."
"You were unconscious."
"She fed babies while I slept on a floor."
"Because somebody drugged you."
"She thought I was dead."
Her voice broke.
"Do you understand that?"
I did not tell her I understood too well.
Instead, I held her shoulders.
"Then be here when she comes back."
Sarah stared at me.
The anger collapsed.
She covered her face.
"Bring her back."
"We will."
I did not know if it was a promise I could keep.
Twelve minutes later, a trooper found a child's sock near a fire door on the fourth floor.
It belonged to Lily.
The door led to an exterior maintenance staircase.
Rain hammered the metal landing outside.
At the bottom was a fenced service yard.
The gate stood open.
Renee had found a way out.
The stolen white sedan was not there.
A delivery van was missing.
Hospital logos were printed on both sides.
The driver had left the keys in the ignition during the lockdown because he assumed nobody could exit through the secured yard.
Renee knew otherwise.
At 12:37 a.m., an alert went out across three counties.
Sarah sat in the ER family room with a blanket around her shoulders while Sergeant Shaw coordinated roadblocks.
Caleb was still inside the hospital.
His attorney had insisted he remain under observation by law enforcement after the syringe incident.
When he learned Lily had been taken, he became furious.
"You let someone abduct my wife's child?"
He shouted at Shaw in front of everyone.
"Your hospital let a criminal walk out with a seven-year-old?"
For once, I agreed with the substance of his anger.
Then he said something that changed the room.
"Renee is unstable."
Shaw turned slowly.
"You know her?"
Caleb froze.
Reddick spoke immediately.
"My client has never denied knowing Ms. Dalton."
"He denied knowing who drugged his wife."
"He did not recognize the description."
Shaw looked at Caleb.
"How do you know Renee is unstable?"
"She worked for my company."
Sarah stood in the doorway.
"She slept in your bed."
Caleb's face hardened.
"Sarah, this is not the time."
"You brought her into our house."
"You disappeared with my children."
"Lily is not your child."
"I raised her for two years."
"You terrified her for two years."
"I paid for her school."
"You threatened to send her away whenever I refused you."
Caleb took a step forward.
A trooper blocked him.
"You are sick," he said to Sarah.
"You have always been sick."
Sarah laughed once.
It was a terrible sound.
"That's your favorite sentence."
"Because it's true."
"No."
She looked at Sergeant Shaw.
"It's the sentence he taught everyone else to use."
Then her expression changed.
"Ask him about Renee's sister."
Caleb went still.
Shaw noticed.
"What sister?"
Sarah kept her eyes on him.
"Her name was Amanda Dalton."
Caleb's attorney stood.
"We are done with this conversation."
"Amanda died at Blackwater Quarry four years ago," Sarah said.
"She was twenty-six."
Shaw's eyes narrowed.
"Accident?"
"That's what Crowe's office called it."
"What actually happened?"
Sarah looked at Caleb.
"She was pregnant."
Caleb's face changed.
Reddick moved between them.
"Sergeant, my client is invoking his right to counsel."
Sarah's voice cut through him.
"The baby was Caleb's."
Silence.
"Renee hated me because she believed I helped Caleb cover it up."
"Did you?" Shaw asked.
"I didn't know until after I married him."
Caleb turned away.
That was the first time I saw shame on his face.
Or something that resembled it.
Sarah continued.
"Renee isn't helping Caleb because she loves him."
"Then why?"
"Because he promised her the truth about Amanda if she helped him get the farm."
The possibility rearranged everything.
Renee was not simply a mistress.
She was another person Caleb had found a way to use.
Then Ben ran into the room holding a radio.
"They found the van."
Sarah stood so fast the blanket fell.
"Where?"
"Old Route Nine, near Blackwater Quarry."
"Lily?"
Ben's face told us before he spoke.
"The van is empty."
A child's stuffed rabbit sat on the passenger seat.
May you like
On the dashboard, written in black marker across a hospital discharge form, were five words.
BRING THE KEY TO BLACKWATER.
