Chapter 11 - The Scent of Tuberose
Midnight.
A heavy, torrential rain beat against the glass facade of St. Jude’s Hospital, turning the streetlights into blurry halos of orange and red.
I crouched behind a laundry utility truck parked in the ambulance bay, wearing stolen navy-blue hospital scrubs and a surgical mask pulled high over my nose. Inside my pocket, wrapped in four layers of lead-lined foil to block the RFID signal, was my cut ankle monitor.
The moment I snipped the plastic band in the alley behind Clara's office, a thirty-minute countdown had begun before county dispatch could triangulate my last known ping.
Twenty minutes had already expired.
I slipped through the basement maintenance doors, my rubber-soled shoes making no sound against the damp concrete. Up the service elevator. Floor four: *Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.*
The hallway was dim, illuminated only by the faint blue glow of heart monitors and emergency exit signs. PICU Room 4B was at the very end of the corridor.
Two county sheriff's deputies were supposed to be guarding the door under Judge Harrison’s protective wardship order.
The chairs outside Room 4B were empty. Two discarded paper coffee cups sat on the floor, their contents still steaming faintly.
My blood ran cold.
I pushed the heavy door open. It slid back on silent pneumatic hinges.
The room smelled wrong. It didn't smell like antiseptic or ozone.
It smelled like heavy, suffocating tuberose.
Beside the high-tech hospital bed, bathed in the sickly green glow of the telemetry monitor, stood Rowena Vance.
Nola lay beneath the thin white sheets, tubes trailing from her mouth and nose, her tiny head wrapped in thick white bandages. Her eyelashes were fluttering, small groans escaping her cracked, dry lips.
She was waking up.
"Nola..." I breathed, tearing down my surgical mask as I stepped into the room.
Rowena didn't startle. She turned slowly, holding a long, pre-filled glass syringe in her gloved right hand. The clear liquid inside caught the green pulse of the heart monitor.
Behind her, the shadows in the corner shifted. Declan stepped out from behind the privacy curtain.
"You really shouldn't have cut the monitor, Elena," Declan whispered, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm. "The police are already en route. But by the time they arrive, they will find that a mother consumed by shame and psychosis slipped into her daughter's room..."
Rowena raised the needle, tapping the glass barrel with one long, crimson fingernail.
"...and finished the job."
On the bed, Nola’s eyes suddenly flew wide open. She saw me. Her small, bruised hand reached out through the bedrails, her fingers trembling violently.
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"Mommy..." Nola whimpered, her voice a fragile, broken gasp behind her oxygen mask. "Aunt Sutton took the box... she took the box from the railing..."
Rowena plunged the needle toward the IV port.
