Chapter 6 - Midnight at St. Jude’sAt 11:43 p.m., Sheree entered St. Jude’s through the same employee entrance she had used thousands of times.
Nothing looked different.
That was the disturbing part.
The vending machine still hummed beside radiology.
A janitor polished the floor.
An overhead speaker requested respiratory therapy in ICU.
Somewhere, a baby cried.
Life continued inside the hospital while armed men waited in hidden rooms.
Leo had wanted twenty men.
Sheree allowed four.
Finn placed them strategically.
Leo hated the plan.
That was one reason Sheree trusted it.
She wore scrubs beneath her winter coat.
The familiar uniform steadied her.
“What did your father mean?” Leo asked through the tiny earpiece.
The place where she learned to save people.
Sheree had initially assumed the emergency department.
But her father died before she became an ER nurse.
He had known her as a nursing student.
She walked toward the old education wing.
Years earlier, nursing students practiced procedures there using mannequins and obsolete equipment.
Most of the wing had since become storage.
Room 214 remained locked.
Sheree remembered it immediately.
Her father had helped her study there once.
She had been twenty.
Terrified of failing anatomy.
Thomas Murphy had sat beside her for four hours while she memorized arteries.
The memory hurt now.
She unlocked the room using a master key.
Inside stood old hospital beds and training mannequins.
One mannequin had a faded name written across its chest.
MURPHY'S PATIENT.
Sheree stopped.
Her father had written it as a joke.
Eleven years earlier.
She approached.
Opened the plastic chest panel.
Inside was a metal box.
“Found it.”
Leo's voice came immediately.
“Do not touch anything.”
“Too late.”
The lights turned off.
Sheree closed her eyes.
“Apparently villains really love electrical systems.”
Leo did not laugh.
Footsteps approached.
Sheree took the metal box.
The door opened.
Daniel Russo entered.
He held a pistol.
Behind him stood Ethan.
His face was bruised.
A gun pressed against his neck.
“Sheree,” Ethan whispered.
Daniel smiled.
“Thank you.”
Sheree looked at him.
“You're shorter than I remembered.”
Daniel frowned.
She threw the metal box.
Not at him.
At the lights.
Glass exploded.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Ethan dropped.
Sheree moved.
Gunfire flashed.
Leo entered from the side door like violence given human form.
Daniel fired.
Leo returned fire.
A man screamed.
Sheree crawled toward Ethan.
“Can you move?”
“My shoulder—”
She checked.
Dislocated.
Not shot.
“Congratulations. You're having a better night than expected.”
Despite everything, Ethan laughed.
Then someone grabbed Sheree from behind.
An arm locked around her throat.
She drove her heel backward.
Missed.
A voice whispered beside her ear.
“Your father was much easier.”
Sheree went still.
Patrick Doyle.
The orderly.
He dragged her toward the hallway.
Leo saw.
His pistol lifted.
Patrick placed a gun against Sheree's jaw.
“Drop it.”
Leo did.
Immediately.
That frightened Sheree more than if he had hesitated.
Patrick smiled.
“There he is. The great Leo Calvino.”
Sheree watched Leo's face.
No panic.
No anger.
Only calculation.
Patrick continued.
“Your brother begged too.”
Something broke behind Leo's eyes.
Sheree felt Patrick's attention shift.
That was enough.
She slammed her head backward into his nose.
Bone cracked.
Leo moved.
The gunshot was deafening.
Patrick fell.
Sheree remained standing.
Blood sprayed across her scrubs.
Not hers.
Leo reached her.
His hands moved over her face, shoulders, throat.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Sheree.”
“I said no.”
Then she saw Daniel running.
Finn intercepted him in the corridor.
Daniel raised his weapon.
Finn fired once.
Daniel collapsed.
Silence returned.
Ethan sat against the wall staring at all of them.
“What the hell have you gotten into?”
Sheree looked down at her blood-covered scrubs.
“Long story.”
The metal box survived.
Inside was not a paper ledger.
It contained a hardware wallet and several encrypted memory cards.
Enough evidence to destroy careers.
Perhaps governments.
Leo stared at it.
“We burn it.”
Sheree looked at him.
“No.”
“If this information becomes public, half the city tears itself apart.”
“If we destroy it, everyone named inside continues.”
“Some of those people will kill thousands to protect themselves.”
“So we choose carefully.”
Leo shook his head.
“There is no careful way to detonate a bomb.”
Sheree thought about her father.
He had hidden the truth for eleven years.
People had died protecting it.
“Then we don't detonate it.”
She looked toward Ethan.
“We use it surgically.”
Leo understood.
Information could be leverage.
Evidence could remove corrupt people without starting a public war.
For once, the nurse and the crime boss were considering the same problem from different directions.
Remove the infection.
Save the patient.
But when Finn opened the final memory card, they discovered something worse.
A list titled SUCCESSION.
At the top was Leo Calvino.
Below it:
GABRIEL CALVINO.
Status: DECEASED.
And below Gabriel:
SHEREE MURPHY.
May you like
Status:
PENDING.
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