Chapter 10 - The Ambush at the Bay
The rain had cleared into a gray, oppressive afternoon mist. Down below, the emergency drop-off lane was crowded with taxis, ambulances, and idling family sedans.
And sitting right in the middle of the lane, blocking a transport van, was a matte-black sedan with tinted windows.
It was Arthur Sterling’s car.
Through the tinted windshield, I could make out the silhouette of a driver leaning across the console, holding a long, matte-black object that didn't look like a phone.
“Mark! Get down!” Derek roared, diving across the hallway and tackling me to the linoleum floor just as a deafening CRACK shattered the double-paned safety glass of the fourth-floor window.
A heavy steel-jacketed round tore through the glass, embedding itself into the wall tile six inches above where my head had been a second earlier.
Alarms instantly shrieked to life across the pediatric ward. Nurses screamed, slamming fire doors shut, while patients and families dropped to the floor in blind panic.
“They found us!” Derek yelled over the wailing sirens, hauling me back up by my jacket collar as smoke from the drywall dust drifted through the air.
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My phone, which had slipped from my hand during the tackle, lay face up on the floor. The call with Lena was still connected. Through the tinny speaker, amidst the sound of gunfire and shouting from the lobby below, a final, chilling sentence echoed through the empty hallway:
“I told you, Mark... they’re already inside the building.”
