Chapter 6 - The Empty Hospital Room
The drive back to St. Catherine's took twelve minutes.
It felt like twelve years.
I called Alora seven times. No answer.
When I reached the maternity floor, two security guards blocked the corridor.
"Where is my wife?"
A nurse hurried toward me. "She's safe. We moved her."
My knees nearly gave out.
They had transferred Alora to a secured wing after a woman dressed in scrubs tried to enter her room claiming to be from fetal imaging. Staff checked the badge, discovered it was fake, and triggered a lockdown.
The woman ran.
Security footage showed her leaving through a stairwell.
Alora was waiting in a private room with a guard outside.
"You scared me to death," I said.
"Join the club."
Her attempt at humor cracked halfway through.
I sat beside her.
"I'm hiring private security. Twenty-four hours."
"I don't want to live like a prisoner."
"I know."
She studied my face. "Do you?"
That stopped me.
Alora had spent months adjusting her life around my family while I called it compromise.
"You're right," I said. "I don't get to decide everything because I'm scared. We decide together."
For the first time since I found her on the floor, some of the tension left her shoulders.
Detective Ortiz arrived with news.
The fake nurse had dropped a disposable phone in the stairwell.
On it were three text threads.
One contact was labeled C.
One was S.
The third was labeled G.H.
Grant Hale.
"The messages go back four months," Ortiz said. "They discuss your wife's appointments, medication list, and daily schedule."
Alora went pale.
"How would he know my appointments?"
Ortiz hesitated. "Someone was accessing your patient portal."
I looked at Alora. "Who had the password?"
"You did."
The room went still.
I pulled out my phone.
My password manager showed a login to Alora's patient portal from my credentials at 1:18 A.M. two weeks earlier.
I had been in Singapore that night.
Then I remembered something.
Months ago, during a board retreat, my phone had disappeared for nearly forty minutes.
May you like
Evan Rusk had been the person who found it.
And according to the access logs, Evan had entered my executive office at 1:07 A.M. that same night.
