Chapter 5 - THE NURSE'S GAMBLE
There was no time to think.
I grabbed my laptop, shoved it into my bag, and pushed Grace and Oliver out the open back kitchen door onto the rusted iron fire escape.
"Go down the stairs as quietly as you can," I whispered fiercely to Grace. "Get behind the big green dumpster by the car and stay down. Do not move until I come for you."
"Mommy, no, come with us!" Grace pleaded, grabbing my sweater.
"I'm right behind you, baby. Go! Be brave forOliver."
Grace swallowed her tears, nodded once, and took Oliver's hand. The two nine-year-olds slipped silently down the metal grates just as I pulled the kitchen door almost completely shut, leaving a tiny crack to peer through.
I couldn't run down the metal stairs with them—my adult weight would make the rusted iron groan and give us away immediately. I needed to buy them thirty seconds to reach the ground.
I stepped back into the narrow pantry beside the back door and gripped a heavy cast-iron skillet sitting on the wire shelf.
Evelyn Vance-Morgan walked into the small kitchen. At sixty-two, she looked like a society magazine cover—silver hair pinned impeccably, wearing a camel-hair coat and pearl earrings. Flanking her was Julian Morgan, David's half-brother, a man with cold eyes and a weak jaw, holding a dark metal stun gun at his side.
"Look around, Julian," Evelyn said, glancing in disgust at the blood smudge on the floor. "Sarah's car isn't out front, which means Jennifer drove her SUV here. Check the bedrooms."
Julian turned toward the hallway, then paused, his eyes catching the draft from the slightly open back door. He walked right toward the pantry where I was standing.
I glanced through the kitchen window. Grace and Oliver had just reached the bottom of the fire escape and were darting behind the dumpster.
Julian reached for the back doorknob.
I stepped out of the pantry. Before he could turn his head, I swung the heavy cast-iron skillet with every ounce of strength I had, smashing it directly into his wrist.
A sickening crack echoed through the kitchen. Julian howled in agony as the stun gun clattered to the linoleum floor.
"You little—!" Evelyn lunged forward, reaching into her designer handbag, no doubt for a weapon of her own.
I kicked the bottom of the rickety kitchen table, sending it sliding straight into Evelyn's knees. She shrieked as she toppled backward over the chairs, crashing onto the floor.
I didn't stay to fight. I snatched the fallen stun gun off the floor, bolted out the back door, and slammed it shut, wedging a heavy wooden mop handle under the exterior knob to jam it from the outside.
I flew down the iron fire escape stairs three at a time, hitting the gravel alley just as Evelyn and Julian began pounding furiously against the jammed kitchen door three stories up.
"Grace! Oliver!" I hissed, running to the dumpster.
The kids jumped out. I threw them into the back seat of my SUV, jumped into the driver's seat, and locked all the doors.
As I reversed out of the alley, I saw the two men in dark suits from the school sprinting around the front corner of the apartment building. I threw the SUV into drive and sped down Pine Street before they could reach their vehicle.
"Mommy, your hand is shaking," Grace said from the back seat, her voice trembling.
"I'm okay, sweetheart. We're okay." I reached back to touch her knee, reassuring myself she was still safe.
"Mrs. Morgan," Oliver said, leaning forward between the front seats. "On the computer... my mom said my dad didn't leave us. She said they have him at Crestview. Is that where they took my mom and your husband, too?"
I looked in the rearview mirror. There was no point in lying to a nine-year-old who had already seen too much.
"Yes, Oliver," I said grimly. "I think that's exactly where they are."
"Then we have to call the police!" Grace said.
I pulled into the crowded parking lot of a large grocery store two miles away, parking right in the middle of a row of minivans to blend in. I pulled out my cell phone to dial 911, then stopped.
On my screen was a text message from an unknown number, received two minutes ago.
It was a photograph.
David and Sarah Hayes were sitting on a concrete floor, their wrists bound with zip-ties to a radiator pipe. Standing over them was a man in a county sheriff's deputy uniform—Deputy Chief Miller, a man whose campaign Evelyn Vance-Morgan had publicly funded last year.
Beneath the photo was a message:
Call the police or the press, and they both suffer a fatal overdose of experimental sedatives before the state troopers even clear the county line. Bring the USB drive and the two kids to the Crestview service gate by 5:00 PM. Come alone, Jennifer.
I stared at the screen, a cold sweat breaking out across my neck. Evelyn owned the local sheriff's department. If I walked into the precinct, they would lock me in a holding cell, take the USB drive, and put Grace and Oliver right onto the Crestview trial roster alongside the other children.
"We can't call the local police," I whispered.
"Why not?" Oliver asked, his eyes wide.
I didn't want to terrify them further. Instead, I opened my purse, searching for my work phone to call a friend of mine who worked at the state attorney general's office in the capital.
As I dug through my bag, my fingers brushed against the green folder Ruth Jenkins had dropped in the cafeteria—I had grabbed two of the loose pages off the floor when I picked up the brass keys.
I pulled the folded papers out. One of them was the list of the twelve families whose children had already been transferred or were scheduled for transfer.
I scanned the names and addresses. And then I stopped at the sixth name on the list:
Marcus Vance — Age 10. Status: Transferred to Crestview North Wing (October 1st).
Wait. Vance?
Evelyn's maiden name was Vance.
Why would Evelyn's own nephew or grandson be locked in the psychiatric trial wing of her own boarding school?
Before I could make sense of it, a sharp knock sounded right against my driver's side window.
I gasped, grabbing the stun gun from the passenger seat and whipping my head around.
Standing outside my car in the grocery store parking lot was Ruth Jenkins, still wearing her Pinecrest Elementary cafeteria apron. And sitting in the rusty pickup truck parked right next to her were six parents—large, angry men in factory work boots and flannel shirts, and women with fierce, desperate eyes.
May you like
Ruth tapped the glass again.
"Roll down the window, Jennifer," the sixty-eight-year-old lunch lady called out. "You didn't think I was going to let you go to that boarding school by yourself, did you?"
