Chapter 27 - THE SIEGE AT ST. JUDE'S
The sirens didn't belong to county deputies.
Five dark green sport utility vehicles belonging to the State Highway Patrol tore through the fairgrounds gate.
Behind them, three black armored units with bold white *FBI* lettering screeched to a halt, boxing Brody’s car in completely.
Dozens of federal agents and state troopers poured out, weapons drawn, shouting commands through bullhorns.
"Marcus Brody! Drop your weapon and get on the ground immediately!" an agent roared through the loudspeaker.
Brody looked at the steel doors of the broadcast truck, looked at the wall of federal agents surrounding him, and lowered his gun.
He dropped the weapon onto the muddy gravel, raising his hands slowly into the air as troopers tackled him to the ground.
The rear doors of the broadcast truck swung open, and federal agents rushed in, checking our perimeters.
"Mrs. Vance?" a female agent with an FBI windbreaker asked, stepping up to my side. "Are you injured?"
"St. Jude's Hospital," I gasped, gripping her Kevlar vest with desperate, shaking fingers. "Ryan is at St. Jude's."
"Evelyn Vance has men inside the hospital right now. They're going to kill him before he can testify!"
The agent turned to her team leader immediately. "Alert Tactical Unit 4 at the medical district! Lockdown St. Jude's ICU!"
She turned back to me, seeing the agony etched across my face as another violent contraction tore through my body.
"Her water just broke!" Sarah shouted, dropping to her knees beside me on the van floor. "She's in active labor!"
"We need a medical escort right now!" the agent yelled out the doors. "Get the ambulance rolling to St. Jude's!"
Ten minutes later, I was strapped into the back of a state police-escorted ambulance, roaring down the highway at ninety miles an hour.
Sarah sat beside me, wiping the cold sweat from my forehead as the paramedics administered oxygen.
"Breathe, Nora," Sarah coached, holding my hand tightly as the siren screamed overhead. "You're five centimeters dilated."
"Those babies are coming fast. You have to focus on breathing."
"Is Ryan alive?" I cried into the oxygen mask, tears blinding my vision. "Please tell me he's still alive!"
The paramedic in the front turned back toward us, his radio crackling with static and urgent chatter.
"Hospital security reports shots fired on the fourth floor of St. Jude's Memorial," the paramedic relayed grimly.
"A private security team breached the ICU corridor three minutes ago. State police are engaging them inside the ward."
My heart stopped.
Evelyn wasn't waiting for Brody.
The moment my face appeared on every television in the state, Evelyn knew her empire was crumbling into ashes.
She had dispatched her remaining hitmen to eliminate Ryan before the feds could secure his testimony.
The ambulance screeched to a halt at the emergency entrance of St. Jude’s Hospital, tires smoking on the concrete ramp.
Federal agents in heavy body armor had already secured the perimeter, their rifles trained on the hospital stairwells.
Sarah and the paramedics wheeled my gurney through the sliding glass doors, racing straight toward the trauma elevators.
The lobby was in absolute chaos; patients and nurses were huddled behind reception desks as alarm bells clanged overhead.
"Fourth floor is locked down!" an agent yelled, holding the elevator doors open for my stretcher.
"ICU Room 412 is secure, but the matriarch herself is on that floor. She refused to leave the room!"
The elevator doors snapped shut, rocketing us upward toward the fourth floor.
When the doors opened, the smell of gunpowder and burnt ozone hung heavy in the sanitized hospital corridor.
Two private security guards in tactical gear lay cuffed face-down on the linoleum floor, guarded by state troopers.
Down the long hallway, outside Room 412, a heavy crowd of federal agents stood with weapons drawn.
Through the reinforced glass observation window of the ICU room, the horrifying scene unfolded.
Ryan was lying in the hospital bed, hooked to a mechanical ventilator and intravenous monitors, his face deathly pale.
Standing right beside his bed, clutching a small glass vial and a hypodermic needle, was Evelyn Vance.
And beside her stood Brianna, pointing a small chrome snub-nosed revolver directly at the attending nurse's head.
"Nobody steps into this room!" Brianna shrieked through the open door, her eyes wild, bloodshot, and completely deranged.
"If anyone comes through that door, I blow her head off, and Mother empties potassium chloride into Ryan’s IV line!"
Evelyn looked up from the bed, her cold, aristocratic gaze meeting mine through the glass corridor wall.
Her beige trench coat was pristine, her silver hair unruffled, her posture completely calm and devoid of panic.
"Hello, Nora," Evelyn’s voice drifted through the ICU intercom system, smooth, cold, and utterly remorseless.
May you like
"You really should have stayed in Ohio."
***
