IT’S A BOY balloons hung crookedly from the walls. Blue streamers stretched across the reception desk. Sonogram pictures were taped everywhere. Tiny baby shoes sat beside old magazines in the waiting area, and wrapped gift boxes covered the floor beneath a banner that read WELCOME BABY KING.
Rich stopped walking completely, and the bag slid off his shoulder.
Good. I wanted him to be uncomfortable and confused.
One of his men looked around. “What the fuck?” he asked.
I could hear them now that they were inside. Earlier that morning, my team had gone through the entire building, setting up everything exactly as I wanted.
Rich’s eyes kept moving from wall to wall, taking everything in. His jaw flexed hard when he spotted one of the sonogram pictures taped near the hallway entrance.
I had printed dozens of them.
“Spread out,” Rich ordered, and his men moved deeper into the building while he stayed near the lobby for another few seconds, staring at the decorations.
Screams echoed somewhere deeper inside the building, and Rich froze when he recognized his wife’s voice.
“Please stop!” she screamed, and even through the grainy video feed, I could see the panic hit him so fast it almost looked painful.
Rich took off immediately.
The sound of his footsteps thundered through the clinic. He checked rooms as he moved, shoving open doors hard enough to slam them against walls while the screaming continued from up ahead.
“Rich!”
His pace got even faster.
“Please!”
He looked genuinely afraid now, and honestly, that shit made me laugh.
He finally reached the end of the hallway and burst through the last door with his gun raised. Nobody was there. Just an old projector sitting in the middle of the room playing a video against the wall.
Rich’s wife filled the screen.
She was strapped to a hospital bed, crying hysterically, wrists restrained while her legs shook violently in stirrups. I stood between them, wearing gloves and a disposable medical gown.
The suction machine droned beneath her screams. Blood stained one of my gloves while I moved between her legs, and the camera dipped in time to catch blood sliding slowly through the clear tubing connected to the machine.
Rich stumbled closer to the wall projection.
Onscreen, his wife cried harder. “Please stop!”
“No,” he whispered.
His face looked completely different now.
I watched his hands shake as he raised his gun toward the projection, then lowered it uselessly. The gun hung at his side like it weighed a thousand pounds.
On screen, I tilted my head and looked directly into the camera lens with a smile. “Find us,” I said softly.
Rich’s breathing had become ragged, almost hyperventilating. He stumbled backward out of the room, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he found me.
He’d search the building, desperate to find his wife. I watched him move through the hallways like a man possessed, checking every room, calling her name.
Rich burst through the door to the back room, and I watched his entire body go rigid when he saw a body curled up on the floor in the corner, still wearing the hospital gown.
“Hannah,” he whispered, and I felt a small thrill knowing he was falling apart.
