Lancaster County Target. Kit Wilkinson

“I’m sure it’s nothing. I guess our eyes are not adjusting to the bad lighting.”

      A loud clanging sounded overhead. Abby, startled by the sound, slipped on the next step. Blake helped straighten and steady her. He had to get her back to bed. She was about to collapse.

      Clang. Metal against metal. Louder and louder. Something was falling. The sound echoed through the space, coming closer and closer.

      He looked up, as did Abby, who was growing faint. He could feel her legs buckling. Blake wrapped himself around her and pushed them both under the cover of the second-floor landing. Something was coming down in a hurry and they had to move or get hit.

      A magnificent crash sounded behind him.

      A stainless-steel surgical tray landed in the very spot where they’d stood, complete with an assortment of sharp scalpels and other surgical instruments, which rattled down around them like a metal rainstorm.

      Once the stairs were quiet, Blake lifted his hands to Abby’s shoulders. “You okay?”

      “No. I’m not.” Her body trembled under his hands as she shook her head from side to side. “I think someone is trying to kill me.”

      THREE

      An hour later, Blake’s thoughts were swimming as he sat with Abby and two policemen in a special conference room of the hospital. The more time they spent going over the particulars of the assault and the incident in the stairwell, the more confused he felt.

      He shook his head. Nothing seemed to make sense these days. His parents’ accident. The revelation of his adoption. His inheritance. His arrival in Lancaster to search for his birth parents. He couldn’t even decide if he wanted to find his birth parents or not...and he might not have a choice. The search, after all, could very well lead to nothing.

      Then again, it could change his life.

      Blake wasn’t sure which of those results he wanted. The future seemed so muddled. He wasn’t used to that.

      In any case, working on his search wouldn’t be happening today. He wasn’t even sure if he would be able to leave the hospital anytime soon. The more he and Abby repeated their stories to the police, the crazier and crazier the whole thing sounded. If it hadn’t actually happened to him, he would not have believed it himself.

      “And the name of the patient that died from cardiac arrest?” Chief McClendon scratched his thinning red hair. He was tall and lean and looked like a man you did not want to cross.

      “Hancock. Nicolas Hancock.” Blake shook his head. “I had an extra copy of his transfer chart, but I left it on the wheelchair when we went to the stairwell, and—”

      “Someone swiped it,” Abby said. “That was right before the tray of scalpels came down on us.”

      “Right. By the time I got back up to the third floor to make another copy, the original chart was gone, too. And the bag containing the IV and tubing that I’d left with the wheelchair, as well.” Blake felt his phone buzz yet again. A friend, a colleague, a lawyer from New York, no doubt. He silenced the phone.

      “So no chart? And now it seems there’s no body, either?” the chief repeated. “No evidence that the man was here at all, except for the testimony from you and the crash team, and the bruising and wounds inflicted on Miss Miller after the alleged injection took place.”

      “I did go to the morgue,” Blake continued. “And no...there’s no Nicolas Hancock. The autopsist said he’d never gotten the body. And now if you check in the hospital’s electronic files, you cannot even find the name Nicolas Hancock in the system.”

      “But his name was there earlier?”

      “Yes, I checked it this afternoon. Before Miss Miller woke up in the E.R. I couldn’t figure out how I was assigned to this patient I’d never seen. I thought I might see another doctor’s name in there.”

      “And did you?”

      “No.”

      “Sorry, I’m late to the meeting.” A small-framed, middle-aged doctor hurried into the room. He moved with sharp gestures as he made his way around the room and shook hands with everyone. “I’m Dr. Dodd. I’m the head administrator of Fairview Hospital and I’m just flabbergasted at the events that have happened here today. Has anyone called the media?”

      “No,” said Chief McClendon. “And that better not happen, either.”

      “Don’t worry.” Dr. Dodd pressed his dark-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’ll see to it that it doesn’t. Hancock’s body is in autopsy. I’ll make sure the findings are not released to the public. Dr. Jamison, in the interim, your actions today will be under review. I understand both of you will be taking a few days off. I’ve already made arrangements for that. Now, if you don’t have anything else for me, I have another meeting to attend. Please let my custodial staff know when they can reopen the stairwell. Keeping it shut off is a safety violation, you know.”

      “You have the body?” Blake asked.

      “Of course. It’s in autopsy. But naturally, you won’t see the report until it gets to me and the authorities.”

      “I guess I don’t understand why I’m under review.” Blake frowned. He really wished he’d been able to save that IV tubing and possibly prove that someone had caused Hancock’s death. “Hancock was dead when I arrived to his room. I’d never seen him before that. The nurses can confirm this. Whatever happened to him—” he looked at Abby “—it happened before I saw him.”

      “No worries, Dr. Jamison.” Dr. Dodd smiled. “It’s just a formality. All part of the paperwork.”

      “You have his chart?”

      “Of course we have his chart.” Dodd looked annoyed.

      “I’ll need a copy of that,” McClendon said. “Thank you.”

      “Is that all?”

      McClendon nodded. Dr. Dodd scrambled out of the room as quickly as he’d come in.

      “I guess you didn’t look in the right places, Dr. Jamison,” said McClendon. “Then again, you are new here.”

      Blake shook his head. He was new—he wasn’t stupid. He knew how to look up files and find a body in a morgue. He’d even spoken to the autopsist. He didn’t like the idea of this review. And he definitely didn’t like Dr. Dodd. Something was fishy about this whole mess, and in situations like this, the administration usually looked for a scapegoat to blame. Blake had a sinking feeling Dodd meant for that scapegoat to be him.

      McClendon tapped more notes into his tablet, then looked to his younger colleague. “Langer, head to the morgue. See what you can find out. Get that file. Then question the crash team and every nurse who came in contact with Nicolas Hancock. Even talk to the person who added his data to the hospital patient files. Somebody has to know something. Do not mention the word murder or either the doctor’s or Abigail’s names. I don’t want any of this leaking out.”

      “Yes, sir.” Langer, who was built like a pit bull and was probably just as feisty, spun away from the hospital conference room and headed to the elevators.

      McClendon stowed his tablet inside his front jacket pocket. “This is a delicate situation. While we want to cover all of our bases, the person we are looking for could very well work in the hospital. This isn’t the kind of person we want to cause to panic. That could make the situation more dangerous.

      “Now, we know that Miss Miller was assaulted and drugged. If your Hancock and her Hancock are one and the same, then it sounds like you both could be in a lot of danger.”

      “We witnessed a murder, right?”

      Abby’s blunt assessment of the day’s events hit Blake like a ton of bricks. Murder? Unbelievable—Abby had witnessed a murder. And to some