Page 13 of The Final Cut

“East dock,” I call.

Deacon changes direction mid-landing and disappears through the second-floor service door. I keep to the stairs because the camera angle shows the outside gate, and if she has a car waiting, I might catch the plate before it disappears.

The feed flickers again. Someone is inside the system. My system.

Anger hits, hard and useful.

I drop onto the bottom landing and type while moving, forcing the hospital firewall to reject the outside packet. The feed clears in time to catch a black sedan rolling away from the dock with the woman inside. No front plate. Tinted windows. Rear plate smeared with mud thick enough to hide the numbers.

The car turns out of frame.

Gone.

Deacon appears on the loading dock a second later, gun low against his thigh, hospital lights striping his face. He looks at the road where the sedan vanished.

I join him, breathing hard.

“You saw the marker?” he asks.

“Rose and rosary.”

His jaw sets.

“She wasn’t here for Cal,” I say, though I do not believe it.

“She was here to see where he landed.” Deacon looks back toward the hospital. “Or to confirm Reva stayed with him.”

I think about the woman moving slowly by the elevator. Waiting for the doctor. Watching our waiting room through glass.

My hand shakes again. This time I let it.

“They followed us from the estate,” I say.

“Likely.”

“They can get into the hospital.”

“Yes.”

“They know Cal is alive.”

Deacon’s eyes are dark and flat. “Yes.”

The word should make the next step easy. It does not. It only makes it necessary.

We go back inside through the service hall, avoiding two nurses and a security guard who looks at Deacon’s gun and makes the wise decision to remember something urgent in the opposite direction.

By the time we reach the surgical waiting room, Nash is already standing between Reva and the doors. Shiloh still has one hand on her arm. My phone is in his other hand, screen lit with the camera feed he does not know how to read and held like a weapon anyway.

Reva sees my face.

“What happened?” she asks.

Nash turns his head toward me. “Report.”

“La Rosa marker. Scrubs. Fake staff or volunteer. Ran when Deacon moved. Sedan at east dock. No plate.”

Reva pulls free of Shiloh. “They’re here?”