Page 12 of The Final Cut

Reva stays standing after he is gone. Her face does something strange. It does not crumple. It goes still, the way water goes still before it freezes.

Shiloh touches her elbow. “He’s alive.”

She nods, a jerky motion that looks borrowed.

“He’s alive,” Shiloh says again, softer.

“I heard him.”

I look past her toward the hall.

A woman in pale blue scrubs pushes a linen cart near the elevator bank, every movement too slow. Everyone else in this building moves with purpose, even when exhausted. She stops beside the hand sanitizer station and turns her wrist as if checking a watch.

There is no watch. There is a bracelet, though.

Small dark beads. A silver cross. A red enamel rose no larger than my thumbnail tucked between them.

My body goes cold before my mind finishes the connection.

Deacon is already looking. Our eyes meet across Reva’s shoulders.

He moves first.

The woman sees him. Her hand drops to the cart handle, and for one foolish second she tries to pretend she has not been caught.

Then she runs.

Deacon cuts through the waiting room doors. I shove my phone into Shiloh’s hand.

“Keep her here.”

Reva turns. “What is it?”

Shiloh catches her before she can follow. “No.”

“Ever.”

I’m already in the hall.

The woman reaches the stairwell door. Deacon is ten steps behind her. Fast. Controlled. Too controlled for a hospital corridor full of people who have no idea a ghost from La Rosa just walked past their vending machines.

I pull up the stairwell camera on my tablet as I run.

The feed glitches.

For half a second the image breaks into gray blocks, then returns to an empty stairwell.

She prepared.

I slam a palm against the stairwell door and go through after Deacon. The metal clangs behind me. Below, footsteps echo. Two flights down. Maybe three.

Deacon takes the stairs in a way that barely touches them. I follow, cursing the dress shoes I wore to sit in a van.

A service door bangs open below.

I switch cameras again. Loading dock. East exit. Ambulance bay.

There. Pale blue scrubs. Hood up now. She cuts behind a parked delivery van.