Chapter 4 - Do Not Trust the Ambulance
"Stop the stretcher!" I shouted.
The man pushing Rosa didn't stop. His partner looked over his shoulder and picked up speed. I grabbed the foot rail just as they reached the loading ramp.
"Where are you taking her?"
"Alternate route," the taller man said. "Hospital entrance is crowded."
"Show me your identification."
He swung an elbow at my face. I ducked. The stretcher lurched sideways, Rosa cried out, and two real hotel employees rushed from the kitchen. The shorter man ran; the taller one dropped the rail and sprinted after him.
The stretcher would have rolled down the ramp if I hadn't caught it. I knelt beside Rosa, furious at myself for almost letting a seventy-year-old woman disappear in front of me.
"I thought they were real," she whispered.
"So did I."
The actual ambulance arrived minutes later. This time I verified the crew with dispatch while a Chicago police officer watched. Rosa squeezed my fingers before the doors closed.
"Nora hid a copy," she said. "Ask Ellie about the blue rabbit."
She took Mason into custody, collected the forged medical badges, and promised to preserve the hotel's surveillance video. Ellie sat beside me with a paper cup of apple juice she never drank.
"Can I go with Rosa?" she asked.
"As soon as she's safe."
"Mommy said if anything happened, I should find you. But the house has cameras, and the people with watches can hear things."
"What people?"
She pointed to the expensive black watch on my wrist. I slid it off. On the back, beside the serial number, was a pin-sized opening that didn't belong in any watch I'd ever owned.
Detective Brooks sealed it in an evidence bag.
"Looks like you may have been carrying your own surveillance device," she said.
My phone lit up again. Vanessa had sent a photograph of herself lying in a hospital bed, one hand over her stomach.
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Under it, a message: SIGN THE TRUST DOCUMENTS OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE OUR SON.
The photograph was from a hospital that had closed three years ago.
