When she came out into the hallway, the nurse that had been speaking with the doctor earlier was still standing at her station, behind one of the mobile computer units on wheels. She was already looking down the hall with wide, alarmed eyes. When she saw Rachel, she pointed to the end of the hall. That way, she said.

Rachel sprinted towards the end of the hall, where it ended and offered only a left turn. As she raced in that direction, she heard a shout of complaint from up ahead, hidden by the wall. Hurrying in that direction, she was vaguely aware of her phone dinging in her pocket again. But that may as well have been happening on some other planet because for right now, she was hyper-focused on catching the male nurse.

She came to the bend in the hallway and took the left. A handful of nurses and other employees were all looking further down the hall, huddled together and trying to figure out what was going on. Rachel looked that way and saw a stairwell doorway slowly closing on its own. Without asking any questions, she rushed to the door. When she opened it back up and passed through it, she reached for her sidearm. Shed much rather not use it in a hospital, but she reminded herself that the nurse had a scalpel in one of his pockets.

Hed come in to kill Dillinger, she thought. But then the unexpected appearance of an armed FBI agent clearly spooked them and now theyre on the run. Now they

She stepped through the doorway and was greeted with a hard right hand to the shoulder. It clipped her shoulder bone, making her think it had been intended for her face. She staggered backwards, directly into the door, and saw the nurse right in front of her. He hesitated as he reached for the shining thing in his pocketa scalpel from what Rachel could tell.

Rachel drew her arm back to retaliate and that seemed to send the nurse into overdrive. He started for the stairs, going so fast that he nearly fell down the first flight. He caught himself on the metal rail and tumbled down the rest of the flight.

Rachel chased him right away, getting so close as they came to the first landing that when she reached out to grab him, her fingertips grazed the back of his scrubs. In reaching, Rachel missed a stair and stumbled a bit herself. She held her hands out to keep from slamming into the landing wall, giving the nurse another head-start on her. As she rebounded from the wall, she saw that he was somehow already down the next flight. She briefly looked down through the maze of rails that descended toward the first floor. She could hear hurried footfalls, and then another door opening up somewhere. Rachel started racing down the flight, coming to the landing for the second floor and then stopped.