Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN WEARING MY FACE
I ran from the hotel without saying goodbye to Claire.
She followed me to the elevator, insisting it was a trap and that I needed the police. I gave her Detective Vega’s number and told her to send the flash drive directly.
Then I left.
Every red light between the marina and the hospital felt deliberate.
Dana called twice more. Nancy had vanished during a fire alarm that emptied part of the pediatric wing. Officer Elliott had responded to smoke near the medication room. The alarm lasted four minutes.
Four minutes was enough.
When I reached the hospital, Detective Vega met me at the entrance.
Her expression stopped me before her words did.
“We need to clarify where you’ve been.”
“My daughter is missing.”
“Where were you?”
I told her about Claire and Room 814.
Vega’s eyes hardened. “You withheld evidence and left the protected floor.”
“I made a mistake.”
“Yes.”
The single word carried more weight than anger.
She led me into a security office where six camera feeds covered the hospital corridors.
At 10:16 A.M., the fire alarm began.
At 10:18, a blonde woman in a burgundy dress pushed Nancy’s hospital bed toward the service elevator.
The woman had my hair.
My height.
My dress.
From behind, she was me.
A second camera captured her profile.
The image blurred as she turned, but her face looked close enough to mine that even I felt disoriented.
“She was wearing a silicone mask,” I said.
“Possibly,” Vega replied.
On-screen, Nancy lay motionless beneath the blanket.
The impostor used an access badge to open the service elevator.
Evelyn’s badge.
A loading dock camera showed the bed being transferred into a white patient transport van. The license plate belonged to Crescent Ridge Behavioral Center.
The quiet house.
Vega dispatched units immediately, but Crescent Ridge reported that the van had been stolen before dawn.
Brandon arrived with Leonard Price.
He saw the footage and pointed at me.
“That’s her.”
“You know it isn’t.”
“You disappeared from the hospital minutes before Nancy was taken.”
“I went to meet Claire Morgan.”
The name struck him like a slap.
Leonard grabbed his elbow, but Brandon’s reaction was already visible.
“You contacted her,” I said.
Brandon recovered. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“She was Daniel’s wife.”
“My brother was never married.”
Detective Vega watched him closely.
“Mr. Hale, lying during a child abduction investigation is a poor legal strategy.”
Leonard ended the conversation.
Hospital staff traced the stolen access badge through multiple doors. Whoever took Nancy knew the building’s internal routes and understood exactly how long the fire doors remained unlocked during an alarm.
Janet Cole, the administrator, admitted Evelyn had helped design the hospital’s family emergency protocols during her advisory-board service.
Evelyn was no longer in the hospital.
Officer Elliott had seen her leave with Leonard Price shortly before the alarm.
Price claimed she had gone home.
Police found her La Jolla condo empty.
I opened the threat photograph again.
COME ALONE, OR SHE GETS THE LAST SEVEN.
Seven magnets remained inside Nancy.
The message implied someone knew details from the confidential surgical report.
Dr. Miles entered the security room, visibly shaken.
Only five people had accessed that report.
He listed them: himself, the surgical fellow, the charge nurse, Janet Cole, and Brandon through the parent portal.
Then he noticed something on the abduction video.
“Pause there.”
The woman pushing Nancy’s bed wore a hospital identification card clipped backward at her waist.
A small green sticker marked the card.
Dr. Miles touched the screen.
“That sticker is only used by pediatric surgical staff.”
The masked woman entered the service elevator.
Just before the doors closed, she leaned toward Nancy and adjusted the blanket.
Her sleeve rose.
A dark crescent-shaped birthmark showed on her wrist.
I had seen that mark every day since Nancy’s operation.
It belonged to her charge nurse.
May you like
The same nurse who had handed me the anonymous envelope.
📖 Discover why Nancy’s trusted nurse helped abduct her—and what Evelyn had done to the nurse’s own child in CHAPTER 9. 👇
