Chapter 11 - The Call from My Dead Sister
The phone rang once.
Twice.
No one reached for it.
Vince held it as though it might explode.
I crossed the aisle and took it from him.
He did not resist.
The screen still showed NORA.
My thumb hovered above the answer icon.
The last time I had seen my sister, she had been lying in a hospital bed in Norfolk after an overdose that made no sense. Nora hated pills. She barely drank. She had been investigating procurement fraud for a private medical contractor, and three days before her death, she left me a voicemail saying she had found something connected to my deployment.
The voicemail vanished from my phone before I could save it.
The official explanation was accidental poisoning.
I had never believed it.
I answered.
“Hello?”
For a second, there was only breathing.
Then a woman whispered, “Noah?”
My knees nearly lost their strength.
The voice was older and rougher, but it carried the same slight break on my name that Nora had had since childhood.
“Who is this?”
“You know.”
“No. I know my sister is dead.”
Claire stepped closer.
The woman began crying quietly.
“They told me you signed the order.”
“What order?”
“To leave me there.”
The bus power died.
Every fluorescent panel went black.
Passengers gasped.
The only light came from streetlamps, police strobes, and the phone screen against my hand.
The call remained connected.
“Nora, where are you?”
“I don’t know the address. They moved me.”
“Who?”
A metallic impact struck the front doors.
The tactical team had begun breaching.
Nora’s breathing quickened.
“She’s listening.”
“Mara?”
The line went silent.
Then a man’s voice replaced hers.
“Mr. Mercer, surrender Claire Dalton and the drive.”
The call had been intercepted.
“Where is my sister?”
“Alive for the moment.”
Claire covered her mouth.
The front door glass cracked beneath another impact.
I looked at Harris. He was conscious now, weakly trying to sit up while Claire supported him.
“How do we move this bus?”
“Manual override,” he whispered. “Panel by my left knee.”
I opened the panel.
A row of mechanical switches sat beneath the disabled electronic controls.
Older hardware.
Sometimes outdated systems saved lives.
Harris guided my hand toward the ignition bypass.
The engine coughed.
Outside, the breaching team paused.
I turned the switch again.
The engine started.
The passengers exhaled as one.
“Can you drive?” I asked Harris.
“Not well.”
“I’ll handle the wheel. You handle the pedals.”
He nodded.
We shifted positions awkwardly, with me leaning over the partition and Harris bracing his injured body against the driver’s seat.
Claire moved beside Ranger.
Cal and Mason came forward.
“We can block the door,” Mason said.
I studied them.
Minutes earlier, they had helped corner us.
Now their employers had tried to gas them.
Trust was not required. Aligned survival was enough.
“Use the seats,” I said.
They began releasing the folding seat brackets near the front, wedging metal frames against the doors.
Vince remained behind.
Too quiet.
I looked over my shoulder.
The blue seat where he had been sitting was empty.
The rear emergency door stood partly open.
He had found a manual release.
Cold air rushed through the gap.
Outside, Vince limped toward the unmarked SUV.
He carried Claire’s purse.
Claire checked her coat sleeve.
The flash drive was still there.
So what had Vince taken?
Then she looked inside the open lining of her coat and gasped.
“The hospital access card.”
Vince reached the masked officer beside the SUV and handed it over.
The officer scanned the card with a portable reader.
A map appeared on the device.
Claire’s face collapsed.
“That card doesn’t just open the hospital.”
“What does it open?” I asked.
“Elias’s evidence locker.”
The masked officer looked toward the bus and raised two fingers.
Half the tactical team immediately broke away toward their vehicles.
They were going back to St. Vincent.
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And Dr. Grant was still there.
📖 See why Noah must choose between escaping the roadblock and racing back to save Dr. Grant’s evidence before Vince’s team destroys it in CHAPTER 12. 👇
