Chapter 44 The Hospital Siege

Chapter 44 The Hospital Siege


POV: Royce

I heard Elizabeth scream from the hallway.

I’d stepped out to take a call from my legal team about tomorrow’s board vote, standing barely twenty feet from Jessica’s door. The sound hit me like electricity. I dropped my phone and ran.

The door burst open just as I reached it. A woman in nurse’s scrubs exploded into the hallway, moving fast and purposeful. She collided with me, and I grabbed her arm on instinct.

She was strong—stronger than expected. She twisted violently, driving her elbow into my ribs with practiced precision. Pain exploded through my side, but I held on.

“Stop her!” Elizabeth appeared in the doorway, pale and furious. “She had a syringe. She was going to inject Jessica!”

The fake nurse drove her knee toward my groin. I pivoted, taking the hit on my thigh instead, and slammed her against the wall. She bounced back immediately, raking her nails across my forearm hard enough to draw blood.

Jade and two other security guards came running from opposite ends of the hallway.

“Stop that woman!” I shouted.

For one second, it looked like we had her cornered. Jade moved to block the stairwell door. The other guards closed in from both sides.

Then the fake nurse did something unexpected. She threw the unused syringe at Jade, forcing her to dodge. In that split second of distraction, she slammed into the stairwell door with her shoulder and disappeared.

“Go!” I ordered one of the guards. “Don’t lose her!”

He ran. Jade followed. I stood in the hallway, breathing hard, blood running from the scratches on my arm.

When I walked back into Jessica’s room, Elizabeth was standing between her sister’s bed and the door, arms slightly spread as if she could shield Jessica’s entire body with her own. Her chest heaved, her eyes wild with adrenaline.

But her feet were planted. She wasn’t moving.

Jessica was awake, watching everything with frightened eyes, too weak to sit up but clearly trying.

“Is she gone?” Elizabeth demanded.

“For now. Jade’s chasing her.” I moved to Elizabeth, checking her quickly. “Are you hurt?”

“No. She didn’t get close enough.” Her hands were shaking, but her jaw was set. “Royce, this is the second attempt on Jessica in this hospital. She’s not safe here. They can walk in wearing scrubs and nobody stops them.”

“I know.”

The decision had already begun forming—since the first fake nurse incident, since Helen’s message on the whiteboard, since the prison surveillance footage.

“We’re moving her,” I said.

“Moving her where? She just woke from a coma.”

“I own a private medical facility on the east side—Sterling Medical Center. It’s small, exclusive, and more importantly, I control the security protocols completely.” I pulled out my phone. “I’ll have a private medical team assembled within the hour. We move Jessica before dawn.”

“The doctors said she shouldn’t be transported yet.”

“And the doctors didn’t account for someone trying to poison her in her bed.” I met her eyes. “She’s not safe here. You know that.”

Elizabeth looked at her sister, anguish warring with practicality.

“Okay,” she said finally. “But she travels with her medical equipment, with a doctor present. And at the first sign her condition deteriorates, we stop.”

“Agreed. Every condition.”

Jessica’s weak voice drifted from the bed. “I’m right here. Can someone explain what’s happening?”

Elizabeth rushed to her side. “Someone just tried to hurt you again, Jess. We’re moving you somewhere safer.”

“Helen?”

“Yes.” Elizabeth stroked her sister’s hair. “But we’re going to end this. I promise you.”

\---

I stepped into the hallway and began making calls.

The director of Sterling Medical Center answered on the second ring, already preparing to execute my instructions. A private ambulance. A cardiac and trauma doctor. A fully equipped secure room.

Then I called Marcus.

“The board vote is in six hours,” I said. “Are the documents ready?”

“Everything’s set. Hendricks’s evidence is compiled and verified. Combined with the recording from Elizabeth’s wire meeting with Helen, we’ve got enough to destroy her takeover attempt—and put her in front of a federal grand jury.”

“And the three board members who met with Helen?”

“Gregory Walsh, Patricia Lyons, and David Kumar. I have bank transfer records showing they each received fifty thousand dollars from a Morrison Industries shell company.” He paused. “Royce, this is airtight. If you present this tomorrow, Helen loses everything.”

“Make sure you’re there. I need you in that room.”

\---

The private ambulance arrived forty minutes later, professional and discreet.

Transferring Jessica required careful coordination. Moving her without disrupting IV lines, monitors, and still-healing surgical wounds took patience and precision. Elizabeth never left her sister’s side, holding her hand through every shift and adjustment.

At 3:15 AM, our convoy pulled out of the hospital loading bay—quiet and quick.

I rode in the follow vehicle with Jade. Elizabeth sat inside the ambulance with Jessica.

For the first ten minutes, everything went smoothly. The ambulance’s running lights glowed steadily ahead in the dark streets.

Then Elizabeth’s face appeared at the ambulance’s small rear window. She pressed her phone against the glass, screen facing me.

I squinted.

She moved it closer.

GUARD TEXTING PHOTOS. BACK RIGHT.

I immediately looked at the security guard positioned at the back right of our vehicle. His phone was angled downward, thumbs moving subtly. It could have looked like routine texting.

Except we’d established a strict no-phones protocol for this transfer.

I watched him for thirty seconds.

He raised the phone slightly—and I caught a glimpse before he angled it away.

It wasn’t a text.

It was a photo.

A photo of our convoy’s current location.

My stomach dropped.

The mole wasn’t in the boardroom.

It wasn’t among the executives.

It was here—in my personal security detail—sitting three feet away, sending our real-time location.

Elizabeth’s phone appeared again at the ambulance window.

AMBULANCE ROUTE IS WRONG.

I snapped my eyes to the road. The ambulance had just turned left at an intersection where it should have gone straight.

That was the wrong direction entirely.

Away from Sterling Medical Center.

Toward the industrial district.

“Pull over the ambulance,” I told Jade urgently.

Before she could respond, my phone buzzed.

A text from Elizabeth.

Four words.

Doors are locked. Moving.

I shoved the guard beside me hard, ripping the phone from his hand before he could react.

“Ram the ambulance,” I ordered our driver.

“Sir—”

“Do it. Now.”

Elizabeth’s voice came through my phone, tight and controlled.

“This isn’t the way to the facility,” she said clearly, making sure I could hear.

Then the ambulance driver responded—cold and deliberate.

“No, Miss Wakefield. It’s not.”

The line stayed open.

I could hear Jessica’s heart monitor beeping steadily.

The low hum of tires on unfamiliar roads.

I had Elizabeth’s phone transmitting live.

I had their location pulled up on my GPS.

I had the traitor guard’s phone in my hand showing exactly who he’d been sending updates to.

And I had maybe three minutes before wherever that ambulance was headed became a place we couldn’t get them out of.

“Drive,” I told our driver, my voice completely calm. “Don’t lose that ambulance. No matter what.”