Chapter 11 - The Hospital Siege
The ride to the hospital took nine minutes.
I remember every second.
The siren screaming above us. Fuentes driving like the city owed her a path. Patricia in the back seat on the phone with the Attorney General’s office, her voice cold and rapid. My own hands locked together so tightly my knuckles burned.
Nobody told me to stay behind this time.
Maybe they knew I would not listen.
Maybe they understood that there are moments when fear stops being something that freezes you and becomes the only fuel left.
Fuentes called the hospital three times.
No answer from the officers.
No answer from the nurses’ station.
On the fourth call, someone picked up.
A man’s voice.
Calm.
“Detective Fuentes,” he said. “You are persistent.”
Fuentes’s eyes sharpened.
“Who is this?”
“You know who I work for.”
“Where are my officers?”
“Sleeping.”
My stomach turned.
“If they’re dead—”
“They are not,” he said. “Yet. I prefer efficiency over mess.”
Fuentes put the call on speaker.
“What do you want?”
“What my employer wants. Daniel Ruiz will withdraw his emergency filing. Patricia Ramos will destroy all copies of the trust documents. The old woman will be moved to private care under medical supervision.”
“My mother,” I said, leaning forward.
A pause.
“Ah. The heir.”
The word dripped with contempt.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Names are for people who plan to be remembered.”
Fuentes mouthed, Keep him talking.
“You sent the video,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why warn us?”
“Because killing an old woman is easy. Teaching a son obedience is more valuable.”
Something inside me went cold.
I understood then that this man was not improvising. He had done this before. Maybe not in hospitals. Maybe not to families like mine. But he knew the shape of fear and how to hold it against a throat.
“You’re not getting the injunction withdrawn,” I said.
Fuentes shot me a warning look.
The man laughed softly.
“Then say goodbye.”
The call ended.
Fuentes hit the steering wheel once with the heel of her palm.
When we reached the hospital, the front entrance was chaos. An alarm flashed silently above the doors. Security guards were arguing with nurses. Patients in wheelchairs had been moved into the lobby. A uniformed officer sat on the floor near the elevators, conscious but disoriented, one paramedic checking his pulse.
Fuentes ran to him.
“What happened?”
The officer blinked hard.
“Coffee,” he muttered. “Someone brought coffee.”
Drugged.
The second officer was found in a supply closet, alive, hands zip-tied behind him.
My mother’s room was empty.
The bed sheets were thrown back. Her IV bag swung gently from the pole. On the floor lay the blanket she had worn in court.
I picked it up.
It was still warm.
The world narrowed to a soundless point.
Then Samuel Ortega appeared at the end of the hall.
“Daniel!”
He was breathless, leaning heavily on his cane, his face gray.
“They took her through service elevators. I saw them. Two men and a woman dressed as transport staff.”
Fuentes grabbed his shoulders.
“Which direction?”
“Underground parking.”
We ran.
Down stairwell after stairwell because the elevators had been disabled. My lungs burned. My legs nearly gave out twice. In the underground garage, fluorescent lights flickered over rows of cars and concrete pillars.
A white medical transport van was reversing toward the exit ramp.
I saw my mother through the rear window.
Her head slumped to one side.
Something in me tore loose.
“Mom!”
The van accelerated.
Fuentes fired at the tires. One burst. The van swerved, slammed into a concrete pillar, and stopped with a crunch that echoed through the garage.
Two masked men jumped out.
One ran.
The other raised a gun.
Fuentes fired first.
The man dropped the weapon and collapsed screaming, hit in the shoulder. Salazar, arriving from the stairwell with three officers, tackled the fleeing driver before he reached the ramp.
I ran to the van.
The rear doors were locked.
I grabbed the handle and pulled until pain shot through my arm.
“Move!” Fuentes shouted.
An officer smashed the window. Another opened the doors from inside.
My mother lay strapped to a stretcher, oxygen mask displaced, wrists bruised from restraints. Her eyes fluttered.
“Daniel,” she breathed.
“I’m here. I’m here.”
A medic rushed in and checked her vitals.
“She’s breathing. Pulse weak but steady.”
I pressed my forehead to my mother’s hand.
For one second, I was not thirty-five. I was a child again, terrified of losing the only parent who had stayed.
Then the wounded man on the floor laughed.
Everyone turned.
He was bleeding, pale, but smiling.
“You think this changes anything?”
Fuentes crouched beside him.
“Who sent you?”
He looked past her at me.
“Ask your wife.”
I froze.
Fuentes hit record on her phone.
“Say that again.”
The man’s smile widened.
“Karina Mendoza paid for the transport.”
“No,” I said.
But doubt is cruel. It enters even when the door is locked.
The man continued.
“She said the old woman needed to disappear before Daniel ruined everything.”
Fuentes glanced at me.
Not believing him.
Not dismissing him either.
The man coughed, then laughed again.
“Love stories are expensive.”
Patricia arrived moments later, heels striking concrete, face furious.
“The injunction is filed,” she said. “And I just submitted an emergency motion to preserve evidence.”
Fuentes stood.
“Good. Because now we have kidnapping.”
As paramedics lifted my mother into a new hospital stretcher, my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I opened the message.
It was a photograph of Karina inside the detention facility, sitting alone in an interview room.
The timestamp was two minutes ago.
May you like
Below it was one line.
SHE CAN STILL DIE FOR YOU TOO.
