Chapter 12 - Trevor’s Phone
Trevor collapsed before anyone reached him.
For all his cruelty, all his laughing, all his eagerness to watch Lily fail, he looked painfully young on the hospital floor with blood spreading beneath his hand.
“Help him!” Mara screamed from the nurses’ station.
Lily moved on instinct.
So did Dr. Patel.
Even Caleb tried to sit up from the transport stretcher.
Agent Reese held him down.
“No.”
Caleb’s eyes burned.
Phone.
Lily saw it too.
Trevor’s phone lay inches from his fingers, cracked but still lit.
Sparrow first.
Lily wanted to grab it.
But Trevor was bleeding.
So she pressed gauze to the wound and became what she had sworn to be before all this darkness found her.
A nurse.
Trevor stared at her, eyes wide with shock.
“You’re helping me?”
“Don’t talk.”
“I’m sorry,” he gasped.
“Save your air.”
“No. Listen.”
Blood bubbled at his lips.
Dr. Patel shouted for trauma supplies.
Trevor’s hand clawed weakly at Lily’s sleeve.
“Vivian has everything. Names. Payments. Transfers. I copied it.”
Lily leaned closer.
“Where?”
His eyes moved toward the phone.
“Cloud… hidden folder…”
Agent Reese picked it up with gloved hands.
Trevor coughed.
“She made me open the door. Said he was dangerous. Said you were crazy.”
Lily pressed harder on the wound.
“You can tell investigators later.”
Trevor laughed weakly, a wet, terrible sound.
“I don’t think I get later.”
Mara sobbed.
For the first time, Lily saw Trevor not as a villain, but as something almost worse.
A coward who had helped monsters because laughing was easier than choosing courage.
“Who stabbed you?” Reese asked.
Trevor’s eyes rolled toward him.
“Concincaid.”
The hallway went still.
Trevor swallowed painfully.
“He’s not running. He’s upstairs.”
Lily’s blood chilled.
“Where upstairs?”
Trevor’s voice faded.
“Records.”
Then his eyes fixed on Lily.
“He said Mason kept copies.”
Lily stood so fast the bloody gauze almost fell.
Records.
Mason’s original files.
The death charts.
The transfer logs.
Everything.
Caleb signed violently from the stretcher.
Go.
Agent Reese barked orders into his radio.
Dr. Patel kept working on Trevor.
Mara kept crying.
And Lily ran.
Evelyn joined her at the stairwell, breathless but determined.
“You are not going alone.”
“Evelyn—”
“I buried my son alone. I am done being alone.”
They climbed to the fourth floor.
Medical records smelled like dust and old paper. The lights were off except for the red emergency exit sign at the end of the hall.
Smoke curled from beneath the archive door.
Lily grabbed the handle.
Hot.
Evelyn cursed.
“Fire.”
Inside, paper burned.
Evidence burned.
Mason burned again.
Lily looked around wildly, spotted the wall extinguisher, smashed the glass with her elbow, and pulled it free.
Evelyn yanked the alarm.
The building screamed.
Lily kicked the archive door open.
Heat slammed into her.
Rows of file boxes smoldered. Flames climbed one metal shelf. Sprinklers sputtered but did not turn on.
Sabotaged.
At the back of the room stood Dr. Concincaid.
No white coat now.
Shirt sleeves rolled.
Face shining with sweat.
In one hand, a lighter.
In the other, Mason Parker’s file.
He looked almost disappointed to see her.
“You should have stayed soft,” he said.
Lily lifted the extinguisher.
“You should have stayed a doctor.”
His face twisted.
“I saved this hospital from men who would have destroyed it with lawsuits and delusions.”
“You killed patients.”
“I managed liabilities.”
Evelyn made a sound behind Lily like something breaking.
Concincaid glanced at her.
“Your son was already broken.”
Lily fired the extinguisher before Evelyn could move.
White chemical cloud exploded across the room.
Concincaid staggered backward, coughing.
Lily rushed through the smoke.
He grabbed her wrist.
Hard.
The same wrist with the scar.
Pain shot up her arm.
“You think Caleb Ror is a hero?” he hissed. “He signed the consent forms.”
Lily froze.
Concincaid smiled through the smoke.
“Oh. He didn’t tell you.”
“He was unconscious.”
“Was he?”
Doubt is a small knife.
He slid it in perfectly.
Then Evelyn struck him across the back with a metal file drawer.
Concincaid dropped.
“Don’t listen to snakes while the room is burning,” Evelyn snapped.
Lily grabbed Mason’s file from his hand.
Sprinklers finally burst alive overhead.
Water poured down.
The fire hissed.
Agent Reese and security stormed in seconds later.
Concincaid was dragged up, coughing, furious.
As they cuffed him, he looked at Lily and smiled.
“You still do not understand. Caleb is not the victim.”
Lily held Mason’s wet file to her chest.
May you like
“Then why are you so afraid of him?”
Concincaid’s smile vanished.
