Chapter 6 - SOMEONE INSIDE THE WALLS
Security locked down the maternity floor within minutes.
Every staff badge was audited.
Every elevator camera was reviewed.
My room was moved twice.
Richard stationed two private guards outside the door, while Detective Ortiz assigned an officer to the hallway.
Still, I could not sleep.
Every sound became a warning.
The click of a cart wheel.
The hiss of an automatic door.
The soft buzz of fluorescent lights.
My daughter moved beneath my ribs, and each kick felt like a promise I might not be able to keep.
David sat beside me with his laptop open, but he had not touched the keyboard in an hour.
“Your mother knows people in this hospital,” I said.
“She knows donors.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
He looked at me.
I remembered dozens of small details I had ignored over the years.
Eleanor always knew when a board position opened.
She knew which surgeons were having affairs.
She knew when wealthy patients were admitted before announcements were made.
She called it being connected.
Perhaps it had been something darker.
At six in the morning, Maggie entered with two cups of tea.
She looked exhausted.
“I checked the staffing list,” she said. “One temporary orderly didn’t report to the security desk after lockdown.”
David stood.
“Name?”
“Paul Renner. He was hired three months ago through an outside agency.”
I recognized it immediately.
“Vance Staffing Solutions.”
David’s face drained of color.
The company carried his family name, but Eleanor had always described it as a small employment charity created by her late husband.
Richard arrived moments later with the hospital’s internal auditor.
The auditor placed a thick folder on my bed.
“Vance Staffing Solutions has supplied temporary personnel to six Sterling hospitals,” he explained. “The contracts were approved through charitable-donor recommendations.”
“How much?” I asked.
“Nearly twelve million dollars over four years.”
David stared at the folder.
“My mother told me the company barely survived.”
“It has no real office,” the auditor said. “Most payments were transferred to shell corporations.”
The room became very quiet.
Eleanor had spent years calling me a gold-digger while secretly draining millions from my father’s hospital network.
Richard opened the folder.
“Who approved these contracts?”
The auditor hesitated.
“Deputy Procurement Director Alan Pierce.”
My father’s expression hardened.
Pierce had worked for Horizon for twenty-one years.
He had attended my mother’s funeral.
Richard had trusted him.
Detective Ortiz entered before anyone could speak.
“We found Paul Renner.”
“Where?” David asked.
“In the employee parking garage. He was attempting to leave in a delivery van.”
My heart began pounding.
“Did he take the photograph?”
“He admitted it.”
“Why?”
Ortiz placed a clear evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a prepaid phone.
“He claims Mrs. Vance paid him five thousand dollars to photograph the maternity entrance and deliver an envelope to your room.”
“What envelope?” Richard asked.
Ortiz looked at me.
“He says he never intended to harm you. He was instructed to frighten you into leaving the state before the assault hearing.”
David’s chair scraped backward.
“I’m going to kill her.”
“No,” I said sharply.
He turned.
“You are not becoming her.”
The fury in his face broke into grief.
He sat down again.
Ortiz continued.
“Renner says the envelope is hidden in a maintenance closet. My officers are retrieving it.”
Twenty minutes later, she returned holding another evidence bag.
The envelope contained photographs of David.
David entering a hotel.
David sitting across from a blonde woman in a restaurant.
David hugging her outside.
A typed note had been placed beneath the photographs.
Your husband has already chosen another life. Take the settlement and disappear before everyone learns the baby is not his.
I looked at David.
He seemed more confused than I was.
“I have never seen that woman before.”
Richard examined one photograph.
“This image is altered.”
“How can you tell?” Ortiz asked.
“The hotel sign was replaced. That building is the Sterling Conference Center. David attended an architectural seminar there last year.”
David took the photograph.
“The woman was one of the speakers. There were fifty people around us.”
Eleanor had manufactured an affair.
She had prepared a story accusing me of infidelity.
She had arranged photographs, headlines, and a hospital confrontation.
The slap had been impulsive.
Everything else had been planned.
My phone rang.
The screen displayed Beatrice’s name.
I answered.
For several seconds, all I heard was breathing.
Then Beatrice whispered, “Sarah, Eleanor knows the police found the orderly.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m hiding in my sister’s house.”
“Why?”
“Because I told Eleanor I was going to tell the truth.”
Behind Beatrice’s voice, glass shattered.
May you like
She screamed.
The call ended.
