Chapter 4 - Reyes On The Line
Miguel Reyes did not ask unnecessary questions.
That was one of many reasons he had survived.
When I said his name, and he answered me as Colonel, the air in the hospital room changed. The boys felt it before they understood it.
Ethan’s phone kept vibrating.
He ignored it at first.
Then looked down.
His face lost color.
Brandon checked his own phone and took half a step backward. Tyler’s jaw tightened, but he had stopped looking amused.
Reyes spoke through the speaker.
“Are you secure?”
“No,” I said.
Ethan looked toward the door.
I continued, “Three suspects are in my daughter’s hospital room attempting intimidation with a settlement offer. Names: Ethan Carver, Brandon Whitlock, Tyler Sloane.”
Tyler snapped, “You can’t—”
I looked at him.
He stopped.
Reyes’s voice remained calm.
“Any weapon visible?”
“No.”
“Hospital security?”
“Compromised or careless. They got in.”
Ethan finally found his voice.
“You don’t know who our families are.”
“I do now,” Reyes said through the speaker.
That shut him up.
Reyes was no longer active-duty in the way he had once been, but men like him never fully left the network. He worked federal investigations now, attached to a task force that crossed agencies whenever money, influence, and obstruction started sharing a room.
He had already received the first file from me that morning.
Lily’s statement.
Photos of injuries.
Campus-security timeline.
Names.
And one detail the college had not expected me to notice.
The service stairwell camera had gone offline eleven minutes before Lily was found.
A maintenance outage, they said.
At midnight.
Behind the athletic complex.
During a donor weekend party.
Reyes did not believe in convenient outages.
Neither did I.
Ethan took a step toward the envelope.
“I’m leaving.”
“No,” I said.
He laughed once, too sharp.
“You can’t detain me.”
I did not move.
“You’re right. I can’t.”
A knock sounded at the open door.
Two hospital security officers appeared, followed by a nurse supervisor whose face suggested she had only just learned unauthorized visitors were inside a protected patient’s room.
Behind them stood a plainclothes detective from the city police.
Reyes said, “But they can ask why you entered a restricted room after being named in an active assault investigation.”
Ethan looked at the detective.
Brandon whispered, “Ethan.”
Tyler’s phone buzzed again.
May you like
This time he answered without speaking, listened for two seconds, and went pale.
Whatever family shield he thought existed had just cracked.
