POV: Evelyn

The man who came to move my daughter was wearing a hospital badge with someone else's face on it.

He entered at nine seventeen pushing an empty wheelchair.

"Sophie Quinn?" he asked.

Sophie stopped coloring.

Silas rose from the chair beside my bed. He did not block the man. He simply became large enough that the doorway appeared to reconsider its dimensions.

"Who are you?"

The man touched the badge clipped to his pale green scrubs. "Transport. Radiology requested the child."

His badge said MARK DAWSON. The photograph showed a round-faced man with blond eyebrows.

The person wearing it had black eyebrows and a fresh razor cut beneath his jaw.

"No," I said.

He looked past Silas at me. "Mrs. Quinn, this is routine."

Grant loved that word. Routine meant I was unreasonable for asking questions.

"What scan?"

"A follow-up."

"For which injury?"

His hand tightened around the wheelchair grip.

Silas noticed. His eyes changed—not color, exactly, but focus. The room seemed to narrow around the stranger.

"Her chart will explain downstairs," the man said.

Sophie slipped off her chair and climbed onto my bed.

"No downstairs."

"She needs to come with me now."

Silas looked at me. "Do you want him out?"

The man laughed once. "You don't need her permission. Call the nurses' station if you don't believe me."

"He does," I said. "You don't."

I pressed the call button.

The stranger stepped backward.

Silas moved only enough to close the doorway with one shoulder.

"You were in a hurry a second ago," he said.

"Move."

"Evelyn?"

"Keep him here. Don't hurt him."

"Those are two different levels of difficulty, but all right."

It was the driest thing I had heard him say. Under different circumstances, I might have smiled.

The man reached inside his scrub top.

Silas caught his wrist before the hand disappeared.

No punch. No growl. Just a sharp turn that brought the stranger against the wall and left his empty palm visible.

A folded piece of paper fell from his pocket.

My medication schedule.

Every dose. Every nurse rotation. The two hours Sophie was allowed in my room.

Something else slipped free beneath it.

A photograph of Sophie leaving school three weeks earlier.

She wore her red coat and carried the rabbit backpack Grant said she had lost on the bus. In the picture, she was holding my hand. A black circle had been drawn around her face.

For a moment, the hospital disappeared. I was back in our kitchen, listening to Grant explain that I misplaced things because I was overwhelmed. The backpack had not been lost. He had taken it after someone photographed us, then waited for me to doubt my own memory.

"Mommy?"

I realized I had crushed the picture in my fist.

Silas did not try to take it. He lowered himself beside the bed until I could see him without looking past the stranger.

"Tell me what you need."

Not what happened. Not calm down. Not give me the evidence.

"Get Sophie behind Maeve."

He moved at once.

Maeve drew Sophie toward the coloring table and began asking which crayon made the best motorcycle flames. Silas returned to the doorway, placing his body between us and the stranger without blocking my view.

Briar searched the man's remaining pockets. She found six hundred dollars in twenties, a prepaid phone, and a hospital parking receipt stamped eight fifty-one that morning.

The phone contained one message.

MOVE THE GIRL BEFORE TEN. USE RADIOLOGY. NO UNIFORMS.

No name. No reply.

Ronan leaned over Briar's shoulder. "Friendly advice: criminals should use punctuation. It won't prevent prison, but it improves the evidence."

The stranger's face remained still. His throat did not.

Silas noticed too. "He knows the sender."

"Or he has acid reflux," Ronan said. "I contain multitudes."

Maeve and Briar arrived together. Maeve checked the badge while Briar cuffed the stranger to the wheelchair he had brought.

"Mark Dawson works in the laundry," Maeve said. "He's fifty-six and has a knee replacement."

The stranger glared at her. "I found the badge."

Briar unfolded my schedule. "And this?"

"Found that too."

Ronan appeared behind her carrying coffee. "Remarkable morning for finding things. Our police found a gun they brought themselves. You found a patient schedule and another man's face. I found out the cafeteria charges four dollars for brown water."

He handed the cup to Silas.

Silas smelled it and handed it back.