Chapter 7 - The Traitor in the Chapel
Adrian locked down the convent within thirty seconds.
Doors sealed. Phones were collected. Guards were reassigned in pairs. No one left the chapel, not even Margaret.
I watched people who had trusted one another with their lives begin measuring every glance.
“Damian wants us suspicious,” I said.
“He also has a source,” Adrian replied.
“Those can both be true.”
Marcus stood near the altar, expression hard. Theo checked the windows. Priya sat at the computer terminal with her hands visible. Lena, pale from blood loss but furious at being ordered to rest, had joined us wearing a sling.
Adrian placed my phone in a signal-blocking pouch. “You are not meeting Sullivan alone.”
“He said alone because he is afraid.”
“He accepted money linked to your father’s murder.”
“His father accepted it.”
“According to him.”
I looked around the room. “If the leak is here, any plan we make openly reaches Damian.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed. “You have an idea.”
“Three plans. Tell different versions to different people. The one Damian reacts to identifies the source.”
Margaret smiled faintly. “Patrick’s daughter.”
We divided the information.
Marcus was told we would send Theo with me through the south gate. Theo was told Lena would drive me from the north garage. Priya was told I would remain at the convent while Adrian met Sullivan using my phone.
Only Adrian and I knew the real plan.
I left hidden inside the laundry truck at five twenty, wearing a convent worker’s coat and carrying a small recorder taped beneath my shirt. Adrian followed separately on a motorcycle, keeping far enough back that Sullivan would not see him.
The old ambulance depot had been abandoned after a roof collapse. Rusted bay doors faced an empty lot striped with weeds. I entered through a side door and smelled oil, dust, and old rubber.
Sullivan stood beneath a broken EXIT sign.
He looked worse than he had at the fire. His shirt was wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot, and his service weapon lay on the floor several feet away.
“I came alone,” I said.
“No, you didn’t.”
My pulse jumped.
He nodded toward the skylight. “Hargrove is on the roof across the street. Good. I hoped he would ignore me.”
“You knew he would follow.”
“I know men like Adrian. They think protection means never letting anyone choose danger for themselves.”
“You have five minutes.”
Sullivan removed a small cassette from his pocket.
My father’s tape.
I recognized the cracked plastic case and the blue ink where twelve-year-old me had once written DAD’S MUSIC.
“How did you get that?”
“Your storage locker was opened two days ago. Not by Damian. By me.”
Anger surged. “You broke into it?”
“To keep this out of his hands.”
“You took evidence from me.”
“I took evidence my father spent twenty years trying to destroy.”
He placed a portable cassette player on a crate and pressed PLAY.
Static hissed. Then my father’s voice filled the depot.
“My name is Patrick Callahan. If Nora ever hears this, sweetheart, I am sorry.”
My knees weakened.
The voice was older than my memories and more alive than any photograph.
He described Project Mercy, the false consent forms, the patients who died after being given unapproved doses. He named Vincent Hargrove and Robert Hargrove—Damian’s father. Then he named Lieutenant Michael Sullivan as the police officer paid to remove evidence.
Thomas Sullivan stared at the floor.
“My father confessed before he died,” he said. “He was the one who called Patrick back to the hospital. He locked the fire door after the explosion began.”
I could barely speak. “Why?”
“Money. Fear. He told himself Patrick would be arrested, not killed. Then Vincent ordered the fire.”
The tape continued.
My father said he had copied the complete patient list and hidden it somewhere only Margaret Hargrove could access.
“Where?” I whispered.
The recording clicked off.
“That part was erased,” Sullivan said. “My father tried to burn the tape. I found it after his funeral.”
“You knew for years.”
“Yes.” His face twisted. “And every year I told myself I was building a case. The truth is, I was protecting his badge and my career.”
The depot door slammed shut behind me.
A laser sight appeared on Sullivan’s chest.
He shoved me aside as the shot came.
The bullet struck him high in the shoulder. Adrian fired from the roof, and the hidden shooter dropped behind a row of wrecked ambulances.
I dragged Sullivan behind an engine block and pressed both hands to the wound.
“Stay with me.”
“Through-and-through,” he gasped. “Missed the artery.”
“Stop diagnosing yourself.”
Gunfire echoed. Adrian entered through a side window, moving fast between cover. The shooter fled through the rear bay, where a black SUV waited.
For one second, the driver’s face turned toward us.
It was Theo Bell.
Adrian’s oldest friend. The man who had guarded Margaret for nine years.
Theo saw Adrian and hesitated.
That hesitation cost him. Adrian fired into the SUV’s front tire. The vehicle spun against a concrete barrier.
Theo escaped on foot, but the passenger remained trapped.
Lena arrived with two guards and pulled him from the wreck.
The captured man wore a Hargrove Health security uniform. In his pocket was a message sent twelve minutes earlier:
NORA LEAVING SOUTH GATE WITH THEO.
The false plan given only to Marcus.
I looked at Adrian. “Theo drove the car, but Marcus sent the message.”
His face went gray.
Two traitors.
Then Lena checked the captured man’s phone again.
“There is another message,” she said. “From Damian.”
She read it aloud.
BRING NORA ALIVE. KILL ADRIAN. MARGARET SIGNS THE COMPANY OVER TONIGHT.
Adrian turned toward the city skyline.
May you like
Adrian’s expression did not collapse. That would have been easier to witness. Instead, every emotion disappeared, leaving the cold figure Chicago feared. I realized then that his reputation was not simply a weapon he enjoyed. It was armor he put on whenever terror threatened to make him human. This time, however, the armor could not hide the truth from me: he believed we might already be too late.
His mother was still at the convent—with Marcus.
