Chapter 3 - The Sealed Room
The room went dead silent, save for the mechanical hum of the infant vital monitor and the faint, rhythmically shallow breathing of my newborn son.
Nurse Sarah was on the floor outside the curtain—I could see the shoulder of her floral scrubs through the bottom crack, unmoving. Marcus had knocked her cold.
"Now then," Marcus said, his shoes pivoting back toward the middle of the room. "No more interruptions."
My mind raced through the layout of the room. The door was locked with an electronic deadlock that required a master keycard to open from the outside once manually engaged from within. The window was triple-pane, fixed glass, eight stories above the pavement. There was no balcony. No fire escape. Just four walls, a locked door, a unconscious nurse, my infant son, my terrified daughter, and me—bleeding out internally beneath a steel bed frame.
"Rachel, I know you're under there," Marcus said calmly.
My heart stopped.
"You always hide the same way," he continued, taking a deliberate step toward the side of the bed. "When we were in the cabin in Bend. When the police came. You think you're clever, but you're predictable."
He gripped the edge of the mattress and pulled the bed skirt upward with a violent snap.
daylight flooded our small sanctuary.
Marcus squatted down, his dark eyes meeting mine. His face was leaner than I remembered, his jaw covered in a thick, unkempt beard, but his eyes held that same wild, erratic intensity that had haunted my dreams for three years.
"Found you," he smiled.
"Don't touch her!" Lily screamed, breaking her silence. She kicked out with her small rain-booted foot, catching Marcus directly on the shin.
"Lily, stop!" I yelled, my voice crackling with disuse.
Marcus winced, grabbing his leg, his expression twisting from smug satisfaction to cold fury. He reached under the frame with a thick hand, grabbing Lily by the collar of her yellow raincoat.
"Get off her!" I lunged forward, ignoring the fiery tearing sensation in my abdomen. I grabbed Marcus’s wrist with both hands, digging my fingernails into his flesh until I felt skin break.
Marcus grunted, letting go of Lily to strike backward at me. His open palm clipped my forehead, knocking my head against the steel bed support. Sparks flew across my vision.
"Mama!" Lily wept, scrambling back toward the wall under the bed.
"Listen to me, you insane bastard," I gasped, trying to draw his focus away from her. "The police know you're in Portland. Daniel is downstairs with hospital security right now. If you don't walk out of here, you're going to prison for the rest of your life."
Marcus laughed—a dry, barking sound. "Daniel isn't downstairs, Rachel."
A icy spike of terror impaled my chest. "What did you do to him?"
"Nothing," Marcus sneered, reaching down to grab my IV line and ripping the needle clean out of the back of my hand. Pain flared through my arm as blood began to welt on the skin. "I didn't have to touch him. I called in a anonymous tip from a payphone near his car, saying a man fitting his description was breaking into vehicles in the west lot. The city cops pulled him out of his vehicle five minutes ago. He's currently slammed against the hood of his sedan trying to explain why he has three different sets of house keys."
He pulled me out from beneath the bed by my ankles. I screamed as my body scraped across the floor, my hands clawing uselessly at the smooth vinyl tiles.
"Mom!" Lily scrambled out after me, tears streaming down her face.
Marcus stood up, dragging me until I was lying fully in the open aisle between the bed and the bassinet. He stepped over me, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a roll of heavy-duty industrial duct tape and a small, silver syringe.
"I didn't come here to kill you, Rachel," Marcus said, kneeling over me and pressing his knee heavily into my thigh to pin me down. "I came for what's mine. Lily is coming with me. And this little one..." He glanced at Noah, who began to cry as if sensing the danger in the air. "Well, he's coming too. Daniel doesn't deserve a son. Not after taking my life from me."
"He's two hours old!" I sobbed, fighting against his weight with every ounce of strength I had left. "He won't survive without hospital care! He needs medication, he needs warmth!"
"He'll survive," Marcus snapped, tearing a strip of tape with his teeth. "I brought formula. We're going north. To Canada. The border crossing at Eastport is wide open if you know the back roads."
He grabbed my wrists, pulling them together to bind them.
That was when the emergency alarm above the door began to blare.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
A bright red light flashed on the wall. Nurse Sarah, who had been lying motionless near the curtain, had reached up with her remaining strength and slammed her fist into the low-level code button near the baseboards.
May you like
Marcus whipped his head around, curses exploding from his mouth. "You stupid bitch!"
He sprang up from my chest and kicked Nurse Sarah in the side, but the damage was done. The alarm was ringing through the entire floor, wired directly to the central security desk downstairs.
