“Yes.”
“Dr.Sattler lives on County Road AA,” she said.“North of the hospital.I’ve seen his name on the mailbox when I drive in for my shifts.”
Caleb’s gaze sharpened.“You know the property?”
“I know where it is.I don’t know anything about it.He’s radiology—I’ve never worked with him directly.But his house is on the road the ambulances use.The same road that has the camera blind spot.”
The briefing lasted another hour.When they finished, Maren pushed back from the table and walked to the corkboard.The timeline in red marker.The photographs—the hospital, the emergency bay, County Road AA.And at the far right of the board, a photograph she hadn’t noticed when she sat down.
A woman.Dark hair.Mid-twenties.The photo was grainy, taken from a security camera, but the face was clear enough.
“Who is that?”she asked.
Caleb came up beside her.“Patient 0917.We pulled her image from the hospital’s backup server before the records were scrubbed.It’s the only proof she was ever there.”
Maren looked at the photograph.The woman whose arm she had held.Whose blood pressure she had taken.Who had said, with absolute certainty, that she had been moved through four hospitals in three months.
“She trusted me,” Maren said.
“She did.”
“I need to find her.”
“We’re working on it.”
“Work faster.”
Caleb didn’t react to the edge in her voice.He looked at her with the even expression of a man who had heard worse from people with more authority and less standing.
“We will,” he said.And it didn’t sound like a platitude.It sounded like a plan.
* * *
Graham drove her home in silence.
Not the heavy silence of things unsaid.The quiet that comes after information—after the mind has taken in more than it can process and needs space to settle.She watched Blossom Springs pass outside the window.Main Street with its storefronts closed for the evening.The hospital visible in the distance, its windows lit against the sky.
She looked at it.The building where she had worked for eighteen months.The building that had been modified from the inside to move human beings through a system that erased them.
Graham turned onto Golden Acres Road and slowed three houses before hers.The same spot.She didn’t comment on it.
He pulled into her driveway and put the truck in park.Left the engine running.
“You did well in there,” he said.
“I wasn’t performing.”
“That’s why you did well.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt but didn’t reach for the door handle.The cab was dark except for the dashboard lights, and he was close—closer than across a dining table, closer than opposite ends of a couch.
“Graham.”
“Yeah.”
“Tomorrow, when I walk into that hospital and stand next to people who are paid to help traffic human beings through a medical system—I need to know something.”
“What do you need to know?”
