“Give that to me!” Silas screamed, his voice breaking.
Harper held the hard drive up. Her eyes locked onto his, cold and unrelenting.
“You want it, Silas?” Harper asked, her voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. “Come and take it.”
Sirens wailed outside the hospital. Real police. The state troopers called in by General Halloway. Red and blue lights began to bounce off the windows of the fourth floor.
Silas looked at the gun in his hand. He looked at Harper. He looked at the phalanx of nurses blocking his only exit.
The reality crashed down on him. There was no father to buy his way out of this. There was no PR team. There was no escape.
The gun slipped from Silas’s fingers. It hit the carpet with a dull thud.
Silas’s knees gave out. He collapsed to the floor, buried his face in his hands, and began to sob. Deep, wracking, pathetic sobs of a man realizing his entire world had just burned to the ground.
Harper walked past him, stepping over his legs without a second glance. She walked out into the hallway.
The nurses parted for her.
Harper stopped in front of David. She looked at the heavy IV pole in his hand, then at the tears in Kinsley’s eyes as she ran out of the room to hug Chloe.
“Thanks for the backup,” Harper said softly.
David smiled, a genuine, exhausted smile. “We stick together.”
“Trauma team, right?” Harper nodded.
She looked down at the heavy, silver hard drive in her hand. It felt heavier than any weapon she had ever carried.
“Come on,” Harper said, adjusting her janitor’s cap. “Let’s go watch the news.”
CHAPTER 4
The grand atrium of Seattle Grace Memorial was less a hospital lobby and more a cathedral dedicated to corporate medicine. The polished Italian marble floors reflected the harsh, white glare of a hundred television camera floodlights. The air was thick and suffocating, buzzing with the hum of reporters, the rapid-fire clack-clack-clack of high-speed shutters, and the cloying scent of Sterling Preston’s bespoke cologne.
Sterling stood at a heavy mahogany podium, bathed in the media spotlight. He looked every inch the grieving, concerned community leader. His silver hair was perfectly coiffed. His expression was arranged in a mask of practiced solemnity that he had rehearsed in front of a mirror thirty minutes prior.
Behind him stood the hospital’s board of directors, a grim phalanx of gray suits nodding in sycophantic rhythm. They were the men and women who had protected the Preston legacy for decades, motivated by the heavy financial endowments Sterling funneled into their personal pet projects.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” Sterling began, his voice a smooth, commanding baritone that resonated through the massive atrium. He leaned into the cluster of microphones, his eyes scanning the room with absolute confidence. “It is with a heavy heart that I must address the violent, tragic incident that occurred within these walls earlier today.”
He paused. He was a master of the dramatic beat. He let the reporters lean in, their digital recorders outstretched.
“We pride ourselves on being a sanctuary of healing,” Sterling continued, his tone hardening. “A place of peace. But today, that sanctuary was violated. A disturbed individual… a former soldier named Harper Bennett, whom we hired in good faith as a temporary travel nurse to assist our overworked staff, suffered a severe psychotic break.”
Murmurs rippled through the press corps. Pens scratched furiously against notepads. Sterling had them hooked. He was painting a masterpiece of lies, weaponizing Harper’s military service against her.
“Suffering from untreated post-traumatic stress,” Sterling lied effortlessly, shaking his head in mock pity. “She infiltrated our Level 1 trauma unit, actively endangered the life of a critical patient through gross insubordination, and then launched a vicious, unprovoked physical assault on my son, the Chief of Surgery, Dr. Silas Preston, when he tried to intervene to save the patient’s life.”
Camera flashes strobed, blindingly bright.
