Chapter 10 - The Threat at My Front Door
Before I moved on the main house, my burner phone buzzed against my ribs.
It was a text from Sarah Jenkins, watching the hospital security perimeter:
Two men in black suits just walked into Mercy General ICU wing. Unmarked black Chevy Tahoe parked in the ambulance bay. They’re looking for Lily’s chart. Get there now.
Arthur Vance wasn't just managing the narrative; he was altering the clinical evidence before the grand jury could receive a subpoena.
I sprinted through the wooded ravine behind the pool house, vaulted the lower limestone retaining wall, and reached my truck hidden on the access road. I turned the ignition, slammed the transmission into drive, and tore down Route 29 toward downtown Peoria, the windshield wipers slapping furiously against the deluge.
Mercy General Hospital was ten minutes away.
I parked on the sidewalk curb beside the emergency intake doors, ignoring the security horn, and took the service stairs three at a time up to the second floor.
The ICU corridor was deathly quiet.
At the nurses' station, an older charge nurse was arguing with a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a wool topcoat and an earpiece. A second man stood outside Room 214—Lily's room—his hands folded across his waist, blocking the doorway with the casual authority of a federal agent.
"I don't care who you work for, sir," the nurse was saying, her voice sharp and defensive. "Medical records cannot be transferred without written authorization from the primary guardian or a direct court order signed by a circuit judge."
"This is an active criminal inquiry conducted by the State Attorney’s Special Investigative Unit, ma'am," the man in the topcoat replied smoothly, holding open a leather badge wallet. "We have statutory authority to secure forensic evidence in felony assaults."
He wasn't state police. I knew the badge pattern. It was an expired Cook County investigator credential, re-jacketed for private corporate security. Gallagher’s men.
I walked straight down the center of the hallway. My boots squeaked on the sanitized linoleum floor.
The man outside Lily's door saw me first. His posture shifted instantly; his hand dipped toward the left side of his suit jacket.
"Sir, this unit is restricted—" he began.
I didn't slow down. When I reached arm’s reach, I seized his lapel with my left hand, slammed him back against the drywall, and drove the palm of my right hand under his chin into his jaw. The back of his head struck the wall with a hollow thump. Before his knees could buckle, I wrenched his service weapon from his holster—a Sig Sauer P320—ejected the magazine with my thumb, racked the slide to spit the live chambered round onto the tile floor, and dropped the disabled frame into a nearby biohazard bin.
The man in the topcoat at the nurses' desk spun around, reaching for his weapon.
"Don't do it," I said, my voice dead and steady.
I had Julian's Glock pointed directly at the center of his chest.
The charge nurse gasped, stumbling back into her rolling chair.
"Who sent you?" I asked, keeping both eyes open, tracking his shoulders.
The man slowly raised his open hands, his eyes darting to his partner slumping against the baseboard. "We're contracted by the Vance legal foundation, Mercer. We’re just here to ensure the chain of custody on the radiology scans."
"You're here to swap the X-rays for an older set showing prior trauma, so Arthur can claim Lily's jaw had preexisting stress fractures," I stated, reading the envelope under his arm. "Give me the folder."
He hesitated for two seconds. Then he looked at the cold iron in my grip and slid the manila folder across the counter.
Inside was a fabricated medical report on forged hospital letterhead, attributing Lily’s injuries to "a domestic altercation or athletic accident occurring prior to the evening of October 12."
They were going to paint my daughter as a liar who faked an attack to cover up a personal dispute.
"Get out of this hospital," I told him. "Take your partner with you. If I see either of you within five miles of this building again, I won't use the floor to stop you."
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The man grabbed his groaning colleague by the collar, hauled him toward the elevator, and vanished behind the sliding steel doors.
I stepped into Room 214 and closed the heavy wooden door behind me.
