Chapter 10 - The Hand Under the Sheet
"Dad!" Owen shouted.
A deputy caught him before he could rush the stretcher. The two attendants wheeling it froze. One pulled back the sheet.
It wasn't Andrew Finch.
The man underneath was older, painfully thin, and awake enough to look frightened. He wore an identification band bearing a name Owen didn't know. Two fingertips beat twice against the metal rail, over and over.
"He's trying to tell us something," Owen said.
The man swallowed. "Blue ... room."
"That's enough," one attendant snapped.
Deputy Kim stepped between them. "Who is this patient?"
The attendants gave different answers. Grant photographed the band and the manifest, then ordered the man's transfer stopped until a physician could assess him independently.
"Ask him why he has two names," Owen said.
The old man clutched Kim's sleeve. "They changed them. They change everything."
Greer had vanished from the loading ramp.
Within an hour, deputies sealed the records office and secured the transport van. Owen sat in a parked patrol car wrapped in a borrowed jacket, sipping water from an unopened bottle. His mother arrived breathless, accompanied by a county advocate who had been helping her file a missing-person report.
Iris Finch dropped to her knees beside the car. "Oh, honey. I called everybody."
"I know."
She held him so tightly he could barely breathe. He didn't ask her to let go.
Across the lot, Grant spoke to a detective in a low voice. When she came over, her face was serious.
"Owen, your father didn't appear on the prison payroll after he went missing. But someone used his employee credential two nights ago."
"So he's alive."
"It's evidence someone used his access. We can't say who yet."
May you like
She hesitated.
"The credential was used to open an old utility wing. A wing officially closed after a fire twelve years ago."
