Chapter 13 - Backup Seventeen
Ortiz fired one shot at the ceiling.
“Everybody down!”
Lucy dropped flat beside Mara.
I saw movement near the back door.
Reed.
I ran after him.
He hit the stairwell and took the steps two at a time.
“Malcolm!”
He looked back once.
Then slammed through the basement door.
I caught him near pathology storage.
He swung a metal tray into my shoulder.
Pain flashed down my arm.
I drove him into the wall.
For a sixty-eight-year-old man, he fought like someone who had practiced being cornered.
He elbowed my throat.
I lost my grip.
He reached for the crash-bar exit.
Ortiz appeared from the opposite hall.
“Don’t.”
Reed froze.
Her weapon stayed level.
“Hands.”
He raised them.
Behind us, Mara arrived with Lucy.
Lucy stared at Reed.
He looked back at her.
No apology.
No fear.
Just calculation ending.
Ortiz cuffed him.
Eleanor was arrested upstairs minutes later.
By dawn, federal agents filled two floors of the hospital.
Every credential server was imaged.
Every Northbridge record was seized.
Mara sat with Lucy in a protected conference room.
I stood outside because I did not know what else to do with myself.
Mara eventually came out.
“She wants to see you.”
Lucy sat at the table with a carton of apple juice.
Two pink socks now.
Tessa had found a pair.
Lucy pushed a piece of paper toward me.
B-17.
I sat.
“Room B-seventeen?”
She shook her head.
Mara said, “Rachel used a backup index.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“Every doctor whose credentials Reed cloned had a number.”
My mouth went dry.
“B means backup.”
Mara nodded.
“Seventeen means you.”
I stared at the paper.
“Rachel scratched B-17 under that desk because she knew Northbridge had used your credentials.”
“So she thought I was involved.”
“At first.”
“And later?”
Mara took out a folded photocopy.
Rachel’s handwriting.
ADRIAN IS NOT PART OF IT. HE IS THE BACKUP IF I FAIL.
The room blurred for a second.
Mara continued.
“She trusted you to finish it. Even after you dismissed her. Even after you trusted Reed over her.”
I read the sentence again.
Lucy touched my hand.
Then alarms began sounding in the forensic lab down the hall.
A technician ran past the conference-room door.
Ortiz appeared seconds later.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Somebody triggered a remote wipe against Reed’s encrypted archive.”
“Can you stop it?”
“We stopped most of it.”
“Most?”
Her face hardened.
“There’s a folder we almost lost.”
“What folder?”
She turned the laptop toward me.
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PHASE TWO.
