It was a mercy in the end.

Chapter 14 — The Hostage

I will tell the next part quickly, because it was quick, and because dwelling on it gives it a weight it does not deserve.

The hospital’s lights flickered and died, and the backup generators caught with a hum, and a building-wide alarm began to sound.

And then, horribly, Victor’s voice came over the hospital’s own public-address system — he had tracked Rachel here, and understood that his alibi had collapsed, and that the evidence that would end him was on a card in my room, and somewhere in all of that he had finally, completely, lost whatever thin thread had ever held him together. Return the memory card to the main lobby, his voice said through the whole building, or people start dying.

Marcus threw the deadbolt on my door.