But what she saw instead made her stop and scowl in bewilderment.

Before her eyes, the surveillance monitors in Calhoun’s booth began blinking out, one by one. Within seconds, every single one of them had gone dark.

Sarah picked up the phone next to Calhoun’s keyboard, listened for the dial tone. It was dead.

“Mommy?” Eli croaked. “Can we go home? I want to go home.”

She nodded. “We’re leaving right now.”

10.

“Which way?” Calhoun asked. He was badly winded from the stairs, the blast furnace that was his chest wheezing so hard that if Calhoun hadn’t been looking straight at them, Mike never would have guessed what he’d said.

“Follow me.” Dr. Walker pushed the stretcher out of the elevator and into the empty hallway, past the nurses’ station.

Six East was Pediatric Intensive Care. Children’s drawings hung from the walls, fluttering as they passed, shaky crayon renderings of sunshine, dogs and cats, smiling kids in wheelchairs. They always made Mike wonder how many of the kids were already dead, leaving behind parents who took teddy bears to the graveyard.

Rounding the corner where the security guard had pointed them, he could already see that the hallway stretched out in front of them was also barren.

“Where’s the vent?” he asked.

“Come with me.” Walker yanked the front of Snow’s stretcher forward, doubling their speed as they rattled down the hallway, the cops and Calhoun having to run to keep up with him. Mike frowned. Walker knew Peds ICU, and he must have known the hallway was a dead end—Where was he going?

At the end of the corridor, twenty feet beyond the last room, Walker skidded to a halt, spun the stretcher crosswise, and pointed at the wall.

Walker, to Calhoun: “Open this.”

And Calhoun, squinting down at it, hands trembling as he struggled to catch his breath, fumbling for his enormous key ring: “Gimme a second.” Repko rolled his eyes, and Mike found himself wondering exactly how much the security guard had had to drink throughout the afternoon. At last he held up a key and wedged it into a nondescript hole, and a moment later Mike saw a door swing open to the right.

The space that was revealed was narrower than the doors that led to the patient rooms, Walker and Calhoun going in front and behind Snow’s stretcher to fit through it. One of the cops followed and the door slammed shut behind them, seemingly of its own volition. But that didn’t make sense, did it? Doors didn’t do that.

Mike and the three remaining cops stood outside, looking at the closed door. There was an awkward high school dance moment where nobody seemed sure what to do. Repko cleared his throat, then Oz reached out, searching for some kind of latch or handle but finding only the keyhole, and hammered the area above the keyhole with his fist. “Open up.” His head swiveled toward Mike. “What’s going on in there?”

“I guess they’re trying to get an airway.”