Chapter 14 - The Man Inside the Hospital
The hospital floor plan proved Nathan's threat had not been improvised.
Someone had planned access to Eli before Megan ever woke up.
The circled room number meant Nathan or an accomplice knew exactly where the child had been moved.
Ortiz ordered a full review of staff badge activity for the night the disguised visitor entered Eli's room.
The person had used no badge at the door because patient rooms did not require one.
But to reach the pediatric wing after visiting hours, someone had passed a secured hallway.
At two-twelve in the morning, a badge assigned to respiratory therapist Carla Mendes opened that door.
Carla had been at home asleep.
Her badge had been reported missing two days earlier.
Hospital security originally assumed she misplaced it.
Now the loss looked deliberate.
Camera footage from a parking garage showed a man in a baseball cap walking behind Carla at the end of her shift on Monday.
His face remained hidden.
He never touched her on camera.
He did not need to.
He passed close enough to take a badge clipped loosely to her bag.
Thomas watched the footage and felt a helpless kind of rage.
Nathan seemed to have anticipated every barrier.
"He planned everything," Thomas said.
Ortiz shook her head.
"He planned a lot."
"That's not the same as everything."
"He didn't plan for Eli's phone."
"He didn't plan for Marissa making a copy."
"And he didn't plan for your old laptop."
Thomas needed the reminder.
Nathan's careful structure was beginning to crack because ordinary people had preserved ordinary things.
A child had left a phone recording.
A neighbor had saved a camera clip.
A foreman had kept an outdated laptop instead of throwing it away.
The truth was surviving in scraps.
Detective Price entered Ortiz's temporary office carrying coffee.
"We may have a location."
Nathan's prepaid phone had pinged briefly near a lakeside motel ninety miles north.
Local deputies were moving in.
Thomas stood.
"I'm going."
Both detectives said no at the same time.
Thomas argued for less than a minute before Megan called him.
"Stay with Eli," she said.
"How did you know?"
"Ortiz texted me because she knew you'd be ridiculous."
Thomas looked at Ortiz.
She almost smiled.
"Fine."
For two hours, they waited.
Deputies reached the motel.
The room registered under a false name was empty.
A television was still on.
Coffee in a paper cup was warm.
Nathan had left minutes earlier.
The bathroom window stood open.
Thomas received an anonymous text ten minutes later.
YOU KEEP ARRIVING AFTER I LEAVE.
He showed Ortiz.
She looked furious.
"He knows our movements too quickly."
Price folded his arms.
"Could be a scanner."
"Could be someone watching the motel."
Ortiz said nothing.
She reviewed the message timestamp.
Then she looked at the small group in the office.
Only six people had known deputies were entering the room at that exact time.
Thomas saw suspicion appear in her face.
Price saw it too.
"Don't start looking at your own team because a fugitive sent a text."
Ortiz's voice remained neutral.
"I'm looking at every route information could travel."
Price set down his coffee.
"Including me?"
"Including everyone."
The room became uncomfortable.
Thomas remembered Price repeatedly presenting the strongest evidence against him.
He remembered Price interviewing Megan alone before she changed her statement.
He remembered Price dismissing Marissa's disappearance as panic.
None of that proved corruption.
But for the first time, Thomas wondered whether Nathan's plan had reached inside the investigation itself.
Ortiz quietly requested an access audit.
The results arrived that evening.
Someone had opened the restricted case file containing the discovery of Eli's phone less than thirty minutes before Judith arrived to confess.
The login belonged to Detective Samuel Price.
Price claimed he had reviewed the file because he was assigned to the case.
That was true.
What he could not explain was a second fact.
His department phone had placed a thirty-four-second call to Judith's attorney immediately afterward.
Price said the call concerned scheduling.
Ortiz asked why the attorney's number had been saved under a false contact name.
Price stopped answering questions.
Thomas felt sick.
Ortiz removed Price from the case and turned the matter over to internal affairs.
Within an hour, Price left the station saying he needed his own attorney.
By midnight, his phone was off.
His home was empty.
His personal car was missing.
Nathan now had a second fugitive connected to him.
Megan listened in stunned silence when Thomas told her.
"Price knew every move police made."
"Maybe not every move."
"Enough."
Thomas sat beside her.
"Nathan wasn't just framing me."
"He had someone making sure the frame held."
Megan looked toward the hospital window.
"Then Mom's confession wasn't only about the video."
"Price may have told her exactly what police recovered."
"And Nathan knew when they were coming to the motel."
Thomas nodded.
A nurse entered to check Megan's vitals.
When she left, Megan whispered something Thomas barely heard.
"There was another person in the kitchen."
He turned sharply.
"What?"
"Not that afternoon."
"Before."
"Two days before."
"I came home early and saw Price sitting at our table with Nathan."
Thomas stared at her.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Nathan said he was helping with a neighborhood fraud complaint."
"Price acted like it was routine."
Megan's face hardened.
May you like
"It wasn't routine."
"They were planning the investigation before there was a crime to investigate."
