Chapter 7 - THE NURSE WHO LIED
The bracelet belonged to a missing girl named Lily Shaw.
Eleven years old.
Taken from outside a dance studio in Astoria six months earlier.
Her mother had put up flyers until rain destroyed them and hope destroyed her.
Now Lily was in Harlan’s truck.
Maybe alive.
Maybe not.
Mara wanted to take the flash drive straight to federal agents.
I laughed once.
Not because it was funny.
Because she still had faith in locked doors.
“Harlan owns people in every building,” I said. “You bring that drive in clean, it disappears dirty.”
“So what do you suggest?” Mara asked.
“We use it.”
“To start a gang war?”
“To end one.”
Before she could answer, a nurse entered Elena’s ICU room.
She was young. Blonde. Tired eyes. Her badge read K. Mercer.
The second she saw me, the blood left her face.
I stepped into the hallway.
“You checked Elena’s pulse,” I said.
Her lips parted.
Mara moved beside me. “Nurse Mercer, did you place the flash drive in the stuffed animal?”
The nurse started crying before she answered.
“I didn’t know who to trust.”
“Tell me.”
She hugged herself. “Dr. Bell said the child was gone. But I saw the monitor. There was activity. Faint, but there. I told him. He said trauma can cause false readings.”
“And you believed him?”
“No.” Her voice broke. “Then I saw a man in a suit hand him an envelope.”
“Harlan?”
She nodded.
“What about the flash drive?” Mara asked.
“Elena had it clenched in her hand when they brought her in. I thought it was a toy. Then Dr. Bell saw it and panicked. He told me to throw everything away. I hid it instead.”
“Why the bunny?”
“She kept whispering one thing before they sedated her.”
“What?”
The nurse looked at Bruno through the glass.
“Big dog knows.”
My throat tightened.
Elena had known Bruno from her father’s restaurant. I had brought him there twice. She had fed him stolen pieces of steak when she thought no one was watching.
Big dog knows.
Nurse Mercer wiped her face. “I tried to report it. My supervisor told me to go home and forget I had a career.”
Mara touched her arm. “You did the right thing.”
“No,” the nurse whispered. “I let them take her to a funeral home.”
May you like
I looked through the glass at Elena’s tiny body surrounded by machines.
“Then help us bring her back all the way.”
