“I’ll see what I can do.”
Thompson nodded once and went down the stairs.
* * *
At five-nineteen on the second, the front doors slid open, and Maren walked in.
He saw her from the volunteer station, where he’d positioned himself with the empty flower cart and a clipboard that gave him a reason to look up every time the doors moved.She was in scrubs.Her hair was in the low knot she wore on shift.Her badge was on the lanyard where it belonged.She walked the way she always walked through that lobby — unhurried, professional, a woman who had walked through this lobby for eighteen months and had no reason to walk through it any differently today.
She didn’t look at him.
That had been the agreement.They’d gone over it twice on Sunday at her dining table.‘Don’t look at me.Don’t adjust your route.Don’t do anything you wouldn’t do on a Tuesday in March.’
She walked past the volunteer station without slowing.Her shoulders were loose.Her step was even.The only thing that gave her away — and only to him, only because he’d watched her walk these corridors twenty times — was the way her right thumb hooked under the strap of her bag at the level of her hip, where the burner phone sat in the lining.
She got on the elevator.The doors closed.
He set the clipboard down and let out a breath he’d been holding since the doors opened.He picked up the cart and pushed it toward the east wing, and he didn’t allow himself to look at the elevator panel as it climbed.
Twelve minutes.That’s how long she needed to be visible on her floor before the alarm.Twelve minutes of normal.He could give her that.
He picked up the clipboard from the cart and walked toward the east wing.
* * *
The alarm sounded at six-thirty on the second.
Three short bursts, then the continuous tone — the standard safety drill pattern the hospital used every year.Staff had been briefed.Patients had been notified.The building responded the way it was supposed to — orderly movement toward exits, nurses guiding mobile patients, aides checking rooms, the intercom cycling through the automated evacuation message in a voice that sounded like it had been recorded by someone who’d never been afraid of anything.
Graham moved with the flow.Clipboard in hand, volunteer badge visible, walking the second-floor corridor toward the east stairwell with the unhurried efficiency of a man who knew exactly where he was supposed to be.He passed two nurses shepherding a patient in a wheelchair.He held a door.He nodded to a security guard who nodded back without slowing.
At six-thirty-four, he reached the radiology access door on the second floor and stopped.The corridor was clear.The evacuation had pulled everyone west, toward the main stairwells and the rally points in the parking lot.East wing was empty.
He put his back against the wall beside the door and waited.
His earpiece crackled.Harper’s voice, low and flat.
“Creighton is in the administrator’s office.She went there at six-twenty-eight, two minutes before the alarm.She’s not evacuating.”
Graham processed that.Creighton skipping the safety drill meant she either knew it was routine or she had something in that office she didn’t want to leave unattended.
“Eyes on her,” he said.
“Already there.She’s on the phone.Can’t get audio through the wall, but she’s pacing.That’s not routine.”
Six-thirty-seven.Five minutes to the second-phase all-clear.
Caleb’s voice came through the earpiece.“Thompson confirms east wing evacuation complete.Your corridor is clear.”
“Copy.”
“Maren reported to her floor at six-nineteen.Visible on the unit until six-thirty-one.Paula confirmed her presence during the initial count.She’s in the stairwell now.”
In the stairwell.Moving toward the supply corridor.Moving toward the four minutes that would either give them the evidence to dismantle a trafficking pipeline or put her in a room with a filing cabinet and no cover story that would survive scrutiny.
He pressed his palm flat against the wall behind him and steadied his breathing.
Six-thirty-eight.
