CHAPTER 3 — The Hunt Begins
CHAPTER 3 — The Hunt Begins
The note was still warm.
I held it between my fingers while Detective Maria Collins photographed every angle. The elegant handwriting was unmistakably Judith's—except for one detail.
The final sentence slanted downward.
Not because the writer had been emotional.
Because she'd written it while walking.
"Seal the hospital," Collins ordered into her radio. "Every entrance. Every exit. Nobody leaves."
Uniformed officers exploded into motion.
Too late.
A nurse hurried toward us, breathless.
"The woman in the cream sweater?"
Collins nodded.
"She left five minutes ago."
"How?"
"She said Detective Collins had authorized her to go home."
Collins cursed under her breath.
"I never spoke to her."
Within minutes, hospital security pulled surveillance footage.
Judith never walked through the main entrance.
Instead, she disappeared into a maintenance hallway.
At the far end...
A man wearing an EMT uniform held the door open for her.
His ambulance wasn't registered to any hospital.
Fake.
Professional.
Planned.
"They had extraction ready before dinner even started," Collins muttered.
"This wasn't panic."
"It was an operation."
I watched the screen.
The fake paramedic never showed his face.
Only a tattoo on his wrist.
A black raven surrounded by a circle.
My heartbeat stopped.
I'd seen that symbol before.
Not overseas.
Not in combat.
Inside a classified briefing room six years earlier.
The Raven Circle.
Officially, it didn't exist.
Unofficially...
It was a network of assassins hired by governments, corporations, and billionaires who wanted impossible problems solved without fingerprints.
Collins noticed my expression.
"You know that tattoo."
I hesitated.
Everything about Raven Circle had been buried under military secrecy.
But Emma was dying.
My children were barely alive.
Secrets no longer mattered.
"I thought they were dismantled years ago."
Collins looked troubled.
"So did Washington."
Two floors above us, doctors fought to stabilize Noah.
Lily had stopped seizing but remained unconscious.
Emma drifted somewhere between life and death.
Three ICU rooms.
Three ventilators.
Three chances slipping away.
Then another alarm echoed through the pediatric wing.
A nurse screamed.
"My God!"
I sprinted before anyone else reacted.
Room 312.
Noah.
His monitor flashed wildly.
A doctor ripped off his oxygen mask.
"This isn't poison!"
"What?"
"He can't breathe because someone disconnected the ventilator."
My eyes shot toward the machine.
The tubing had been cleanly detached.
Not accidentally.
Deliberately.
Someone had entered my son's ICU room.
While police filled the hospital.
While detectives questioned witnesses.
Someone had walked past every safeguard...
...to finish what the poison started.
Security footage showed a masked janitor entering Noah's room exactly ninety seconds before the alarms sounded.
No face.
No fingerprints.
Only the same raven tattoo.
Professional.
Again.
"They're still inside," I said.
Collins nodded.
"Lock every floor."
But instinct screamed something different.
This wasn't an escape.
This was a distraction.
I turned.
"Lily."
I burst into my daughter's room just as another nurse reached her IV line.
"Stop!"
The woman froze.
"What?"
I grabbed her wrist.
Too calm.
Too steady.
Not frightened enough.
She smiled.
Wrong move.
I twisted her arm behind her back.
The syringe fell onto the floor.
Clear liquid.
No hospital label.
The "nurse" drove an elbow into my ribs with military precision.
Not a civilian.
She kicked backward, breaking free.
Then sprinted down the hallway.
I chased.
Past terrified visitors.
Past shouting officers.
She moved like she'd spent years training.
So had I.
She rounded a corner.
I tackled her before she reached the stairwell.
The impact cracked tiles.
She reached for something inside her pocket.
Knife.
I slammed her wrist against the floor.
The blade skidded away.
Within seconds officers surrounded us.
She laughed.
Actually laughed.
Collins pulled off the woman's surgical mask.
Nobody recognized her.
No hospital employee.
No identification.
Only a tiny capsule hidden beneath her tongue.
"Don't—"
Too late.
She bit down.
Foam bubbled from her mouth.
Thirty seconds later...
She was dead.
Suicide.
No answers.
Only silence.
That evening, Collins placed a sealed evidence folder on the ICU waiting-room table.
"We identified the poison."
I opened it.
My stomach tightened.
VX-17 Neurotoxin Prototype
Status:
Destroyed.
Government records indicated every sample had been eliminated five years earlier.
Except...
One shipment.
Missing.
Never recovered.
The shipment had disappeared from...
Fort Halstead.
I closed the folder slowly.
I knew Fort Halstead.
Because I'd been stationed there.
The theft happened...
...the week my unit lost four soldiers during a classified mission.
A mission officially blamed on enemy forces.
What if...
It hadn't been the enemy?
Before I could finish the thought, Collins received another call.
Her face drained of color.
"What?"
She looked directly at me.
"They found Brian."
Emma's old college friend.
"Where?"
"In the hospital parking garage."
"Alive?"
Collins swallowed.
"Barely."
Brian had been zip-tied to the steering wheel of his own car.
His mouth taped shut.
His abdomen soaked in blood.
Someone had carved six words across his chest.
YOU INVITED THE WRONG FAMILY.
As paramedics loaded him into surgery, he grabbed my sleeve with surprising strength.
His lips trembled.
"Judith..."
I leaned close.
"What about Judith?"
His eyes filled with terror.
"She's..."
Flatline.
Brian died before finishing the sentence.
But in his clenched fist...
Police found a torn photograph.
Half of Emma.
Half of me.
The missing half had been ripped away decades earlier.
May you like
On the back, written in faded ink:
Project Christmas Child — Subject #12
