Something eased in his expression. Not relief. Acceptance.
A knock sounded. Dr. Martinez stepped in, his expression warm.
“Ms. Whitaker, your uncle is awake and asking for you. He’s stable. He insists there’s something he needs to tell you.”
The words hit harder than she expected.
“Can I see him?”
“Of course.”
She looked back at Jack. He nodded.
As Annie stepped into the corridor, the hospital sounds closing around her, she felt the strange calm that followed terror—not peace, exactly, but clarity. The violence had notbeen random. The warning had not been empty. Someone had believed Eleanor’s truth powerful enough to kill for.
And now, finally, that truth was no longer buried.
***
Jack watched Annie disappear down the corridor, the quiet click of the door sealing behind her. Only then did he allow himself to sink fully into the pillows, the thin mattress and stiff sheets pressing against muscles that felt bruised far beyond the bullet wound alone. His shoulder throbbed in a slow, insistent rhythm, pain blooming outward with each heartbeat. The medication dulled the sharpest edges, but it did nothing to ease the weight settling into his bones, or the exhaustion pulling at him from the inside out. Even so, beneath the pain and the haze, something unfamiliar stirred.
For the first time in years, the case no longer felt endless.
Eleanor’s evidence existed. Federal authority was now involved. Sarah Mitchell’s operation had been named, traced, disrupted. The chain that began in 1927 had finally been pulled into the light. His parents were safe. Uncle Eric was alive. Annie was no longer standing alone inside the storm. The danger had not vanished, but truth was finally moving, and with it came a fragile, hard-won sense of forward motion.
We’re going to make it, he thought. Not because the threat was gone, but because it was no longer hidden.
His phone vibrated in his hand.
Jack frowned, expecting an update from Agent Chen or a message from his parents. Instead, he saw an unfamiliar number and a single line of text.
The evidence dies with you. Both of you. This isn’t over.
The room seemed to contract around him as he read it again, then once more, his pulse accelerating. The haze of medication thinned under instinct. This was not bravado. It was not anonymous posturing. The wording was deliberate. Immediate. Close. Whoever had sent it had not done so blindly.
They knew he was awake.
They knew Annie had just left.
Cold slid down his spine as his mind began sorting through the implications. His number was not public. Only medical intake, federal contacts, and law enforcement had accessed it since admission. That narrowed the possibilities to a margin that made his skin prickle. Hospital security was designed for disorder, not infiltration. Visitor access was fluid. Staff rotated constantly. And Mitchell Security specialized in placing people where they did not belong.
His phone vibrated again.
Room 314. We know exactly where you are.
Jack’s blood turned to ice.
They were not watching from a distance. They were inside.
He pressed the call button for the nursing station, keeping his voice low and controlled. “This is Detective Calloway in 314. I need you to contact FBI Agent Sarah Chen immediately. Tell her there is a confirmed security breach and that Annie Whitaker may be in immediate danger. I also need hospital security notified and this floor locked down. Eric Whitaker’s room needs protection immediately.”
The response was confused, procedural, already too slow.
Jack tore his gaze from the panel and tried to move. The IV lines resisted as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, the monitors tugging sharply at his skin. Dizziness washed through him, but he braced his good hand against the mattress and forced himself upright. Hospitals were not safe places. He had learned that early in his career. They were predictable. Accessible. Built on trust. And trust made them dangerous.
He had just started pulling free of the leads when the door opened.
Every instinct in him tightened, muscles coiling despite the injury, his mind already measuring angles, exits, distances. But it was Agent Chen, two federal agents entering behind her, their presence shifting the room from clinical to tactical in an instant.
