Chapter 4 - The Escape Through the Loading Dock
I scrambled back onto the gurney, pulling the thin cotton blanket up over my shoulders and arranging my limbs into the exact awkward, lifeless posture I had held ten minutes prior. I closed my eyes just as the heavy door swung open, flooding the dim room with a harsh beam of white hallway light.
"Check the biometric scanner on the transport box," a gruff, unfamiliar male voice commanded—a man whose expensive leather boots clicked sharply against the concrete floor. This wasn't a hospital orderly; this was a professional operative working for the Genesis syndicate.
"Dr. Vance said the mother is completely under," Brenda’s voice replied nervously as she stepped into the room alongside the courier. "Just sign the digital hand-off receipt on the tablet so we can clear the loading bay before the security patrol makes their rounds."
I lay perfectly still, holding my breath so completely my lungs began to burn. I could hear the digital chime of a tablet screen tapping, followed by the electronic beep of a barcode scanner passing over a medical transport container parked just a few feet from my stretcher.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. If they looked closely at my face, if they noticed my pulse throbbing visibly in the hollow of my throat, the game would be over instantly.
"Manifest matches," the courier grunted, his voice thick with cold indifference. "Load the unit onto the van. The buyer's private jet is waiting on the private airstrip outside the city limits."
The sound of heavy wheels rolling across the concrete floor filled the room. My eyes still squeezed shut, I listened with agonizing precision as the transport container holding my baby—or the secured staging unit linked to her—was pushed toward the back service exit leading directly to the underground loading dock.
As soon as the heavy metal sliding doors of the loading bay rolled open, a gust of cool, damp night air swept into the subterranean corridor.
Now.
Before Brenda or the courier could turn around to secure the room, I slid off the gurney, dropped into a low crouch, and bolted into the deep shadows behind a row of stacked industrial laundry bins.
"Hey! What the—" Brenda shouted, spinning around in surprise as the clatter of my bare feet hit the concrete.
"Stop that woman!" the courier roared, drawing a heavy metal flashlight from his belt and pivoting toward the sound.
I didn't look back. I pumped my legs with every ounce of remaining strength, sprinting past the idling delivery van with its back doors wide open. Security alarms began to blare overhead, bathing the loading dock in flashing red emergency lights and deafening sirens.
I vaulted over a low concrete retaining wall, slipping through a cracked chain-link service gate just as a security guard burst out of the auxiliary guard shack shouting commands. The rough gravel tore at my bare feet, and the cold night wind lashed against my thin hospital gown, but I didn't feel the pain.
I burst out onto the quiet public street surrounding the rear perimeter of the medical center, ducked behind a row of overgrown evergreen hedges, and pulled the stolen manifest pages out of my waistband.
Trembling violently, I pulled out my phone—which had miraculously remained tucked safely inside my purse hidden in the hospital locker room before I was prepped for surgery—and dialed the only three numbers that mattered.
May you like
"911," a calm dispatcher's voice answered through the speaker. "What is your emergency?"
"My name is Clara Holloway," I gasped into the phone, tears of pure adrenaline streaming down my face as I watched security guards pour out into the street behind me. "I am standing outside Saint Jude Memorial Hospital. I need federal agents, state police, and an immediate lockdown of the Genesis Group transport network. They just stole my newborn child."
