“Did you happen to see a phone in his room?” Adam asked after Jay prompted him to by making the universal sign for phone with his pinky and thumb held next to his head.
“No,” Dax replied. “No personal items whatsoever.”
“And nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing. There’s been a shift change, and the nurses on duty have no idea what happened to him. Can your team check the surveillance footage? It’s the only way we’re gonna get any answers.”
“Already on it,” Adam said, accepting Jay’s nod as confirmation. “We’ll call you back as soon as we have something.”
“Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” Dax said. “We’ll do another sweep while we wait. If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”
“Appreciate it,” Adam replied. “Tell Lou I owe him one.” With a stab of his finger, he ended the call. “What do we have, Jay?” With a swivel of his leather chair, he stood and came around the table to see the video footage for himself, Chase Mackenzie joining him.
“Nothing yet.” The last location they had on Jamie put him in a private room near the SICU, and while the main hub had a surveillance camera, the view down the hallway was limited and grainy at best.
With the video set to four times normal speed, the hospital staff scurried back and forth across the frame, doing their jobs and discharging their duties. More than an hour passed in about five minutes real time. “There,” Jay said, slowing things down when he noticed an older gentleman in scrubs approach the nurse’s station.
Caught on camera, Jamie’s father spoke to the woman on duty, and after a quick exchange, she exited stage left toward the surgical wing while he retraced his steps. Fast forward again, and he reappeared seven minutes later, pushing a hospital bed in front of him.
“That’s him,” Cody Babbitt said, pointing to the sheet-covered body. “Has to be.”
“Yeah. But he’s not dead,” Jay replied, watching the bed for any sign of movement, and seeing none.
When he reached the bank of elevators, Jamie’s father hit the down button once, twice, three times. Seconds later, the car arrived, and the doors opened. With his back to the camera, he pushed the bed inside.
As the doors closed, another set opened, and a large man stepped onto the floor.
“Fuck.” Adam leaned in for a closer look. “That’s Bill Ryerson.” A known associate of Jonas Johnson, the last time anyone had seen the asshole, he’d been bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound.
Thanks to Takoda Keenan’s sharpshooting skills outside a warehouse in Savannah, Ryerson’s partner in crime had been unalived with a bullet to the heart. Already ducking to avoid the line of fire, Ryerson had taken a bullet to the side of the neck instead of the head, spilling blood, but apparently, not enough to kill him.
Regardless, Tak had saved multiple JTT lives that day, and taken hostage by Johnson’s financial backers, he hadn’t been seen or heard from since. It was Jay’s job to find him, and so far, he’d fucking failed miserably.
If they could get their hands on Ryerson, maybe…
“Who the fuck is that?” Chase asked when a second man came into view. Shorter and skinner than one would expect a hitman to be, the newcomer looked around, his expression cold and calculating as he pointed toward the patient rooms.
The plane shook again, and the pilot announced they’d be in for a bumpy descent.
“Keep searching the hospital feeds,” Adam ordered as he and Chase returned to their seats. “I want proof Jamie’s still alive and visual confirmation they got away. Cody, find out everything you can about his father, starting with where he lives, and if he has any secondary properties. Z, do a facial recognition search on the new guy. Chase, send Dax pictures of Johnson’s men. Tell him if he finds them, and he can take Ryerson alive, we want him. Otherwise, it’s surveillance only.”
Laptops opened and keyboards clacked as the team got to work.
Less than ten minutes later, Jay’s computer pinged a notification. The ongoing search he’d run on Jamie by full name, letting him know he’d picked up something on one of the hospital’s servers.
He paused the security video he’d been scanning, and with a couple of taps of his finger on the tracking pad, he pulled up the information.
The new patient record had his heart twisting.
Newborn Name: Baby Snow.
Sex: Female.
Weight: Five pounds, five ounces.
Delivery: Emergency cesarean section.
Mother: Kosamina Snow (deceased).
