Chapter 10 - CODE PINK
“Code Pink. NICU. Code Pink.”
The overhead announcement ripped Hannah out of the chair.
“No.”
She ran.
She should not have been able to run twenty-four hours after emergency surgery, but terror did not ask permission from pain.
Dominic and Tomas were beside her before she reached the hall.
Security doors were closing throughout the floor.
A nurse came sprinting from the NICU.
“Someone triggered a fire alarm in the west stairwell.”
“My babies?”
“Baby Noah is here. Baby Lily—”
The nurse stopped.
Hannah grabbed her shoulders.
“Where is my daughter?”
“We can’t find her isolette.”
The world narrowed to one sound.
Hannah screaming Lily’s name.
Dominic’s voice cut through it.
“Cameras.”
Tomas pulled up the security feed on his phone.
A woman in scrubs pushed a covered neonatal transport bassinet through a service corridor.
Kelsey.
“She’s heading to loading,” Tomas said.
Dominic ran.
Hannah followed until Dr. Kline caught her around the waist.
“You’ll tear your incision open.”
“That’s my baby!”
“I know.”
Downstairs, Tomas and two hospital officers reached the loading dock just as a white medical van accelerated away.
Dominic stepped into the lane.
The van swerved.
Tomas dragged him aside an instant before it smashed through a gate.
Dominic hit the pavement, rolled, and came up with blood on his temple.
“Plate?” he barked.
“Stolen.”
Then his phone rang.
Victor.
Dominic answered on speaker.
His brother’s voice was almost cheerful.
“You always did get sentimental at the wrong time.”
“Bring the child back.”
“She’s safe.”
“If you touch her—”
“I don’t want the baby, Dom. I want the Mercer archive.”
Dominic went silent.
Hannah, listening through Tomas’s second phone upstairs, whispered, “What archive?”
Victor continued.
“Vincent kept copies. Contracts. judges. accounts. names. You know what I mean.”
Dominic’s eyes closed.
“I don’t have it.”
“But Hannah does.”
May you like
Hannah stopped breathing.
Victor said, “Ask her what her mother hid inside the red music box.”
