Chapter 2 - The Hospital Corridor
“Move,” I snarled, shoving Miller away so hard he stumbled into the side of his own cruiser.
“Blake, what is it?” Vance asked, reading the sudden, violent shift in my posture.
“They’re in the hospital,” I said, holding up my phone screen so all three members of Ghost Squad could see the live, encrypted feed intercepting the facility's internal security loop.
On the screen, the two men in janitorial scrubs had just cleared the threshold of Room 304. Emily’s room. Through the fish-eye lens of the hallway camera, I saw one of them slip a heavy, industrial-grade plastic trash bag from his pocket, while the other pulled a roll of reinforced duct tape. They weren’t there to intimidate her anymore. They were there to finish what Cameron Voss started in the bedroom.
“We have twelve minutes to St. Jude’s,” Deacon calculated instantly, his hand already on the door handle of an unmarked government Ford Explorer parked near the tarmac gate. “Traffic on Route 60 is backed up near the bridge.”
“We don’t have twelve minutes,” I said, sliding into the driver’s seat. Vance took shotgun, while Deacon and Eli piled into the back, their tactical gear bags unzipped and contents spilling across their laps as they checked magazines and suppressed pistols.
“Get in!” Vance shouted back at the two local deputies who were scrambling off the hood of their cruiser. “Stay on the ground, or we’ll bury you where you stand!”
I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal. The Ford Explorer’s twin-turbo V6 screamed, tearing rubber across the wet tarmac, smashing straight through the automated security gate with a shower of splintered PVC and flashing red warning lights. Behind us, the two deputies scrambled into their ruined cruiser, lights flashing and sirens wailing in pathetic pursuit. They thought they were chasing a rogue soldier. They had no idea they were chasing a firing squad.
As I wove the heavy SUV through morning commuter traffic at ninety miles per hour, my mind raced back to Emily. Sweet, brilliant Emily, who spent her weekends volunteering at the animal shelter and teaching art to underprivileged kids. She had no enemies. She had never hurt a fly. But she had eyes. She had been standing in the underground parking garage of the county courthouse three weeks ago when Cameron Voss, high on prescription painkillers and cheap tequila, had beaten a young clerk bloody against the concrete pillars. Emily had screamed for him to stop, pulled out her phone, and filmed the entire brutal assault.
When the police arrived—summoned by Emily herself—Sheriff Nathan Cole had personally responded. He took the phone, deleted the cloud backup right in front of her, and threatened to charge her with filing a false police report and public harassment. The victim had vanished into witness protection within twenty-four hours, terrified into silence. But Emily didn’t back down. She filed a formal internal affairs complaint with the state police.
And that was her death sentence. Or it would have been, if she hadn’t married a man trained by the deadliest asymmetric warfare unit on the planet.
“Approaching St. Jude’s,” Vance announced, his eyes glued to a tactical tablet tracking the hospital’s Wi-Fi network and internal closed-circuit television feed. “The two hostiles have breached Room 304. They’re locking the door from the inside.”
“Cut the engine,” I ordered, sliding the SUV into a violent handbrake turn that left black skid marks across the emergency room ambulance bay.
We didn’t use the front entrance. We knew the layout—every hospital in this region shared standard architectural blueprints. We hit the service loading dock on the east wing, bypassing the front desk entirely.
“Deacon, cover the stairwell exit,” I barked as we burst through the heavy steel double doors into the sterile, white-tiled basement corridors. “Eli, you take the service elevator shaft. Vance, you’re with me up the central core. No witnesses, no noise. We extract Emily first, then we find out who sent the cleaning crew.”
We moved with terrifying speed. Silent, lethal shadows gliding past terrified nurses and confused orderlies who only saw four men in dark jackets moving with unnatural synchronization.
We hit the third floor. Room 304 was thirty yards down the corridor.
Through the frosted glass window of the door, I saw a terrifying shadow silhouette: a large man holding a pillow over a hospital bed, while another figure held down a thrashing, struggling shape beneath the sheets.
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My heart shattered into a million pieces.
I kicked the reinforced wooden door so hard the heavy brass deadbolt sheared straight through the frame, sending the door crashing inward with an explosive boom that echoed down the entire hospital wing.
