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Chapter 766:
The room was empty. The bed was unmade. A cold AMA discharge waiver lay on the nightstand.
Cole froze, a terrible wave of panic and loss crashing through him. He spun around and grabbed a nurse running toward VIP 2.
โWhere is my wife?โ he demanded, his eyes bloodshot. โWhere is June Erickson p>
The nurse flinched, pointing shakily toward the elevators. โShe left five minutes ago, sir. She checked herself out against medical advice with her lawyer p>
๐ฎ๐๐ด๐ข๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ฒ ๐บo๐๐ ๐น๐ช๐ฏra๐๐ ๐ฐ๐ป.ั๐ผ๐ฎ
Cole released a breath he hadnโt known he was holding.
Then, through the glass window of VIP 2, he saw the ER director snatch the IV bag from the stand. The label was clearly visible from where Cole stood: June Erickson โ VIP 1.
โSomeone tampered with the medication!โ the director shouted, his face ashen.
Coleโs blood turned to ice.
He stared at that IV bag, and the full weight of what it meant settled over him like a stone. June had just brushed shoulders with death.
And she didnโt even know it.
Inside VIP 2, the defibrillator delivered a dull electric shock. The ER director, sweating through his scrubs, injected the elderly woman with a massive dose of epinephrine and finally pulled her back from the edge.
Cole strode into the room and snatched the contaminated IV bag from the directorโs hand. He stared at the printed labelโJune Erickson โ VIP 1โhis knuckles white. There was a tiny, almost invisible pinprick on the silicone port, with a faint residue of cloudy liquid around it.
The veins on the back of his hand rose. He understood exactly what he was looking at. If June had not insisted on leaving early, the woman fighting for her life on that bed would have been her. A primal fear and fury unlike anything he had ever felt consumed him. He turned to his chief assistant, who had run in behind him.
โLock down the entire hospital,โ he said, his voice dangerously low. โNo one in, no one out. Call the NYPD commissionerโI want Major Crimes here in ten minutes. Pull every security camera feed from the VIP floor for the last hour. I want to see every person who walked that corridor. I donโt care if itโs a janitor or a surgeon. Full backgrounds on my desk within the hour p>
The assistant moved immediately.
Ten minutes later, the head of hospital security appeared at Coleโs side, sweating, holding a tablet. He pulled up a blurry clip from the fire exit camera. It showed a woman in an ill-fitting nurseโs uniform pushing a medical cart through the emergency exit. Her face was covered by a mask and gogglesโbut Cole would have recognized that walk anywhere.
โAlycia,โ he said, the name coming out like something bitten off. โPut out an all-points bulletin. Find her. Bring her to me p>
On the other side of Manhattan, in Eastonโs heavily secured penthouse, June sat at a large oak desk. She was wrapped in his cashmere blanket, her face still pale, but her fingers moved across the keyboard of her encrypted laptop with practiced precision.