Chapter 4 - The Raid on Ward Five
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The armored matte-black Maybach tore south down Michigan Avenue through the blowing snow at eighty miles an hour, running three consecutive red lights as Matteo worked the police-band frequency scanner from the front passenger seat.
In the backseat, Tessa sat gripping the leather armrest with her left hand while her bandaged right palm throbbed against her knee. Across from her, Roman was checking the load on a suppressed Heckler & Koch P30 pistol with the calm, terrifying efficiency of a man preparing for a board meeting.
"Why would Arthur Sterling risk arson, kidnapping a sick ten-year-old, and crossing you just over a cracked foundation on a downtown construction site?" Tessa asked breathlessly as the car whipped onto Harrison Street toward the hospital complex. "My dad told me three months ago that the concrete pilings on the Wacker tower were poured with substandard grade mix—that costs millions to fix, sure, but Arthur is worth three billion!"
"Because the Wacker Drive tower isn't just a luxury condo project, Tessa," Roman said, sliding the magazine home with a sharp clack and looking across the dim cabin at her. "Tonight’s dinner at my hotel was the final private lobbying push before Friday’s Gaming Commission vote. Arthur is bidding against me for the exclusive two-billion-dollar downtown casino license—and his Wacker Drive tower is the proposed site."
Tessa’s eyes widened. "If my father’s unredacted inspection notebook proves he falsified structural safety reports and bribed city engineers on that building—"
"He doesn't just lose the two-billion-dollar casino license on Friday," Roman finished coldly. "His bank consortium calls in eight hundred million in construction loans on Monday morning, and he goes to federal prison for fraud. Wait—there’s something else."
Roman paused, studying her face beneath the passing amber streetlights. "Your father was Frank Cole. Structural engineer for the Department of Buildings."
"Yes," Tessa whispered. "He died of a sudden heart attack in his truck three days after he refused to sign Arthur’s waiver."
"When a fifty-two-year-old man with no history of cardiac disease dies in his pickup truck seventy-two hours after threatening a two-billion-dollar casino bid," Roman said quietly, "it usually isn't cholesterol, Tessa. What exactly did your father put inside your sister’s stuffed bear besides soil density charts?"
Before Tessa could answer, Matteo’s voice cut in sharply from the front seat:
"Boss! Our South Side unit just reached the fifth floor of Mercy General—the two Sterling security guards signed out ten minutes ago, right after you threatened Sterling at the hotel!"
Tessa let out a gasp of relief. "They left?! Because of what you said to him at dinner?"
"Wait," Matteo frowned, holding his earpiece tighter against his jaw. "Our guys say Chloe’s nurse is standing outside Room 512 arguing with two men in dark suits and a woman carrying a silver briefcase who just came up the east service elevator—claiming to be night-shift emergency caseworkers from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services with a court transport order!"
"DCFS doesn't do non-emergency hospital removals at ten-thirty at night in a blizzard!" Tessa cried, lunging forward between the seats. "And Chloe is hooked up to a continuous milrinone cardiac drip—if they unhook her line and put her in a car without a pediatric cardiac transport team, her heart will fail before they go ten blocks!"
"Pull right into the emergency ambulance bay, Luca," Roman ordered the driver, his voice dropping into that sub-zero register that meant someone was about to die. "Take the surgical freight elevator straight to five. Tessa, stay two steps behind me."
Ninety seconds later, the Maybach screeched to a halt inside the heated concrete ambulance bay of Mercy General.
Ignoring the startled shouts of the triage orderlies, Roman, Matteo, and two six-foot-three Vane enforcers strode straight through the pneumatic double doors like a military strike team, with Tessa running right at Roman’s elbow in her torn banquet uniform and Roman’s oversized cashmere overcoat draped over her shoulders.
When the stainless-steel doors of the fifth-floor elevator slid open onto the dimly lit Pediatric Cardiac ICU corridor, the scene at the end of the hall made Tessa’s blood boil.
Two thick-necked men in cheap dark suits—hired muscle who clearly didn't belong to any state agency—were blocking the doorway of Room 512 while Roman’s two South Side guards stood ten feet away in a tense standoff, reluctant to draw weapons in front of the crying pediatric nurse until Roman arrived.
Inside the glass-walled ICU room, a sharp-faced woman in a trench coat had already unlatched the wheel brakes on ten-year-old Chloe’s hospital bed—and was reaching with a pair of medical shears to clip the IV tubing connected to the frightened little girl’s chest port!
And tucked under Chloe’s left arm against the pillow was a worn, one-eared brown corduroy teddy bear.
"Chloe!" Tessa screamed, sprinting down the polished linoleum hallway.
The larger of the two fake DCFS guards in the doorway spun around and shoved his heavy palm straight toward Tessa’s chest to knock her to the floor.
He never touched her.
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Roman stepped past Tessa like a shadow moving at twice human speed. Catching the guard’s extended wrist with his left hand, Roman drove his right elbow squarely into the center of the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe with a sickening crunch, and slammed the man’s head into the reinforced wire glass of the ICU partition before throwing him unconscious to the floor!
Matteo dropped the second hallway guard in half a second with a kidney blow from the butt of his pistol, while Roman strode into Room 512 just as the woman in the trench coat lunged for the brown teddy bear in Chloe’s arms!
