A nurse ran past the doorway, shouting that the security system had failed.
Then smoke began pouring from the ventilation vents.
“Move!” Beckett yelled.
We entered the corridor as patients were rushed toward the stairwells.
Through the haze, three men in medical uniforms moved against the flow of traffic.
They were not helping anyone.
They were searching.
One looked directly at me.
“There.”
Wyatt shoved a medication cart into their path.
Beckett fired one warning shot, and the corridor erupted into panic.
Melanie grabbed my hand.
For the first time since childhood, we ran together.
We reached the emergency stairwell, descended three floors, and burst into an underground parking garage.
A black SUV waited near the exit.
The driver lowered the window.
Walter Pike sat behind the wheel.
“Get in!”
Beckett aimed his gun.
“How did you leave your room?”
Walter smiled faintly.
“I have been escaping hospitals longer than you’ve been a detective.”
We climbed inside.
As the SUV sped through the gate, an explosion shook the building behind us.
Melanie stared at Walter.
“Where are you taking us?”
“To the only person Virex cannot intimidate.”
“Who?”
Walter turned onto the highway.
“Your grandfather’s third patient.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“You said Melanie and I were the only children.”
“No,” Walter replied.
“I said you were both treated.”
The city disappeared behind us.
Then he spoke the name of the third patient.
“Wyatt Cole.”
—
PART 6
THE FIANCÉ WHO KNEW MORE THAN HE ADMITTED
The silence inside the SUV became unbearable.
I turned toward Wyatt.
He did not look surprised.
That was the moment my heart broke.
“You knew.”
He stared through the windshield.
“Sadie—”
“You knew.”
“I knew part of it.”
“How much?”
Walter drove north toward a private airfield.
Wyatt’s face was pale.
“My mother worked for your grandfather.”
“What?”
“She was a laboratory nurse.”
The truth landed slowly.
All the coincidences I had once called fate suddenly rearranged themselves.
Wyatt meeting me at a charity event.
Wyatt recognizing Grandpa’s old watch in a photograph.
Wyatt asking strangely specific questions about my childhood illnesses.
“You didn’t meet me by accident.”
His eyes filled with pain.
“No.”
Melanie whispered, “You were watching her.”
“At first.”
The words cut deeper than I expected.
“Was any of it real?”
Wyatt turned toward me.
“All of it.”
“You lied from the beginning.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“That is what every liar says.”
Walter pulled the SUV into an aircraft hangar.
Inside waited a silver private jet and a woman in her early sixties.
She had Wyatt’s eyes.
