Chapter 3: Room 14
I asked Camille to stay.
She pulled the chair close to the bed without being asked and sat down.
"Who was in Room 14?" I said.
"I can't share patient information.
But I can tell you the room was occupied for two days prior to checkout." She paused.
"And I can tell you that your husband visited that corridor three times yesterday.
We have him on camera."
Eli had climbed onto the edge of the bed beside me.
He was small enough that his feet didn't reach the floor.
"I told you," he said quietly.
Not to me.
To the room.
"You did," I said.
"You told me."
The security supervisor — his badge said R.
Okafor — leaned against the wall with a notepad.
"Mrs.
Harmon, does the name Dara Wills mean anything to you?"
It didn't.
And then it did.
Not a name Luke had ever said out loud.
But a name I had seen once, on his phone, fourteen months ago.
He'd told me it was a contractor.
Someone from the hospital project.
My hands were very still on the blanket.
"Where did that name come from?" I asked.
"Room 14 was registered to a Dara Wills," Okafor said.
"She checked in two days ago.
She delivered a baby girl this morning, approximately forty minutes before you did."
The room tilted slightly.
"What happened to her baby?" I said.
Okafor looked at Camille.
Camille looked at her hands.
"That's what we're trying to establish," he said.
I picked up my phone.
The unknown text was still on the screen.
*She's safe.
But you need to ask Luke about the woman in Room 14.*
"Someone knew," I said.
"Someone sent me this before any of you came in here.
Before the Code Pink."
Okafor held out a gloved hand.
"May I?"
I gave him the phone.
He photographed the screen, then handed it back without touching the message itself.
"We'll need the number traced," he said to the nurse beside him.
She nodded and left.
Eli tugged my sleeve.
"Sarah.
Is June okay?"
"I don't know yet, sweetheart."
"Luke knows where she is.
He said something on the phone this morning.
Before we came to your room." Eli's voice dropped.
"He said, 'Just keep her there.
I'll be done in an hour.'"
The air went out of me.
Okafor's pen stopped moving.
He looked up slowly.
"Eli," he said, very carefully, "do you remember anything else he said?
Anything at all?"
Eli thought about it.
His small face was serious in a way no six-year-old's face should be.
"He said a name.
He said — 'Tell Renata not to move until I call.'"
Renata.
I didn't know that name either.
May you like
But somewhere on this locked-down floor, or somewhere beyond the secured elevators, my daughter was with someone named Renata.
And Luke had put her there.
