Everything in the room got quiet—except for Tim’s ragged breathing. He was bent over, his hands on his thighs like he’d just run a marathon. Andre froze, his face relaxing, posture gathering. Morgan loved that about him. Instead of panicking when things went wrong, Andre was like her—he became an oasis of calm, assessing the situation, appraising the options, acting on the best one.
Except this time they had no idea what the situation really was beyond the closed door leading to the hallway.
“Wait here,” Andre said. “I’ll be right back.” He started toward the door.
Emma found Morgan’s hand and squeezed it. “Help him.”
Morgan intercepted Andre. “I’ll go; you stay with Emma.”
He glanced down at her, ready to dismiss her offer. Not because he thought she wasn’t capable or would run, but because he cared about her. Despite his scars, Andre’s emotions were almost as easy to read as Micah’s.
“Andre, if he’s targeting Jenna, then he’s here to target the people she loves—you and Emma. Find a way to get Emma out, or at least protect her. I’ll go see exactly what we’re dealing with.”
He frowned even as he nodded. “Switch your cell phone to airplane mode. Take pictures if you see a device. Don’t try to do anything foolish like that stunt you pulled this morning.”
“You mean the stunt that saved Jenna’s life?”
He gave her a quick hug. “I mean the stunt that almost got you killed.”
Morgan was out the door before he could say any more. The corridor was eerily empty. The fire doors at both ends of the ward were closed, and the fire alarm was blinking. Emma’s room was two doors down from one of the doors, so she turned in that direction first.
The first room was empty, with the lights off. In the next was an elderly man with an oxygen cannula, struggling to get up from a chair and reaching for his walker.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, when he saw Morgan looking in. “No one came to get me. I’ll be late for lunch.”
“I’m not sure,” she told him. “Wait here; I’ll find someone.”
She reached the doors at the end of the ward. They had glass panels, the thick kind embedded with wire to reinforce them. Virtually unbreakable. Beyond the glass was another ward—also empty. She reached for the door handle, but then stopped. Instead she pressed her face against the glass and scanned the space below. There were no devices that she could see, but there was something extending out beyond the door handles: a piece of black metal tubing that was curved at one end.
She shifted to the opposite side of the door to look back the other way—it was a bicycle lock made of tubular steel. Crouching, she pushed the door open just far enough to press her eye to the crack. No bomb, just the lock holding the doors shut. She forced the doors open as far as she could, stretched one hand through, and tried to move the oval shaped length of steel. If she could slide or rotate it so that she could reach the lock, she could pick it and get the doors open. But it was too long, and she couldn’t maneuver it past the handles.
Then she realized. If someone had targeted Emma’s ward, and locked them in to prevent escape in this direction…then what was waiting at the other end of the hall?
She quickly cleared the other rooms as she went; no sense letting anyone get the drop on her from behind, and there was no reason why a bomber couldn’t shift to using a gun. The residents were all gone, and no one was hiding in any of the storage or treatment rooms. She reached the nursing station and realized why it was empty: according to the bulletin board, there was a mandatory staff meeting. Given that this was also the residents’ lunch hour, it also explained the empty patient rooms.
But still, there should be someone… She moved past the desk to a door with an electronic keypad lock marked Staff Only. When she rattled the knob, someone pounded from the other side.
“Hey, let me out!” came a woman’s voice. “I’m locked in!”
“I’m getting help,” Morgan told her. With any potential threat contained behind the locked door, she swept past the desk and turned to the other set of fire doors. No bicycle lock on these. Instead, there was an oxygen tank resting in front of the doors.
Coming from it were wires attached to the door handles as well as the magnetic locking strips at the bottom of the threshold. When she crept closer, snapping photos from every angle, she saw that the oxygen tank had a weld around its center—as if it had been cut apart and put back together. How many explosives could be packed into an oxygen tank? A helluva lot more than what the letter bomb had held was the only answer she could think of.
The tank’s gauge had been replaced by something that she guessed was a mercury switch—so any motion might trigger the bomb—and a digital smart watch, the kind that could receive text messages. Or provide a countdown.
Which meant the bomber might be watching. She glanced above her. The security cameras were old, fixed in position aimed at the corridor and the nurses’ station. So old that the system was probably hardwired, not broadcasting a signal the bomber could hijack. But he was obviously familiar with the layout; he’d done enough recon that he knew when the floor would be empty, and how to quickly set his trap and escape. He’d probably placed his own cameras.
But there was no time to search for them now. She backed away and returned to the nurses’ station. The woman behind the door was still pounding on it. “What’s the code?”
“3245,” the woman shouted.
Morgan slid one of her smaller daggers into her sleeve, holding it at the ready and out of sight, then entered the code and opened the door.
A tall woman in her forties wearing a volunteer’s pink vest came tumbling out. “I was on the phone—needed a quiet spot—but someone shut the door on me, and I couldn’t get out.”
Morgan glanced past her into the room. It was clearly where the nurses prepared and stored patient medications. She doubted they’d allow a volunteer access—unless the woman had taken advantage of the staff’s absence to find the code and help herself. But then who had locked her in? “What’s your name?”
“Kelly.”
“Come with me.” Morgan ushered the woman in front of her and back down the hall toward Emma’s room.
“What’s going on? They called a Code Black—do you know what that is?”
“A bomb threat.”
“Then why aren’t we evacuating?”
“We can’t,” Morgan answered, as she practically shoved Kelly into Emma’s room.
“Emma,” Kelly said, rushing forward.
“Kelly, is that you?” Emma greeted the newcomer. “Come sit with me.”
Andre and Tim joined Morgan in the doorway. She handed Andre her phone with the photos. “There’s an oxygen tank that’s been tampered with blocking the far exit. The other exit is blocked with a bicycle lock holding the doors closed. And there’s another resident in the room beside those doors.”
“So there’s no way out?” Tim said, his voice rising. Andre glowered at him, but of course Emma had already heard everything.
“There’s always a way out.” Morgan prowled the room. The police and fire department would be here any minute—and might get themselves killed if they came in too fast. She grabbed Emma’s landline from her bedside table and dialed 911. Of the adults in the room, the only two she trusted were Emma and Andre. She handed it to Emma. “Can you explain to them what’s happening? Tell them the threat is real and not to come through those doors.”
Emma nodded and cradled the phone to her face, speaking in a calm tone as she explained the situation.
Kelly grabbed Morgan’s arm. “But they’ll come cut the lock on the other door, right? So we can get out before—in time, right? They’re coming now, right?”
Morgan shook free of the woman and spun her in Tim’s direction—he was the office manager, let him manage her—and looked out the windows. Police cars and several fire trucks had already filled the parking lot while residents and staff were streaming out the main doors. It would take them several minutes to get up here—if they dared come so close to an explosive device at all.
She clenched her fists in frustration, pressing them against the window so hard the panes shook. If she could reach that damn bicycle lock, she could open it in ten seconds or less. All she had to do was literally cross a few inches of space from their side of the doors to the other…
All she had to do was make it across the space—no one said she had to use the doors. “Everyone, we need to move.”
“Why?” Tim asked. His voice, high-pitched for a man his age, was really starting to grate on her.
“Because you guys are going to take shelter in the room at the end of the hall, while I’m going to get those doors open.”
“How?” This time it was Kelly doing the asking. But Emma was already standing up, taking Kelly’s arm to guide her, giving the volunteer no chance to dawdle.
“I’m going to take a walk outside,” Morgan told her.