Hospital staff attended to the accident scene. Odessa and Blackwood raced from the Rolls-Royce, pushing through the crowd of onlookers. The back doors were open. An ambulance attendant was being strapped onto a spinal board, unconscious, her neck and head in a cervical collar. The stretcher was on its side, empty. The body in the front seat was covered with a sheet, deceased.

Odessa showed her badge to one of the attending emergency room doctors to facilitate questioning. “Where is the patient who was in the back of the ambulance?”

“That’s her,” he said, pointing to the driver’s cab. “Impact of the crash sent her into the front.”

“Dead?” said Odessa.

“Dead on arrival,” said the doctor. “They said the ambulance was doing fifty and gaining speed when it shot through the parking lot and rammed the building. Driver must have lost his mind.”

Odessa had an image of the wounded bank customer attacking the driver in the front seat and taking the wheel.

“But if that’s the patient…” said Odessa. She looked at the ambulance again. “Where’s the driver?”

They rode up to Solomon’s floor, Odessa imploring the elevator to rise faster. The doors opened and she ran the short distance to his room. A red light over his door was flashing.

Inside, two nurses knelt on either side of the ambulance driver, lying facedown on the floor. Solomon’s bed was empty.

“Where is he?” asked Odessa.

The nurses were still in shock at what they had found. One of them stood. “He’s dead,” she said, referring to the ambulance driver.

Odessa gripped the nurse’s shoulder. “The patient in this room,” she said, “Earl Solomon. His bed’s here. He’s not.”

The nurse looked at the empty bed, slow to understand.

A male nurse came running to the door, drawn by the red alarm light, stopping when he saw the ambulance driver’s body.

The nurse said to him, “Earl Solomon. Patient in this room. Where is he?”

The male nurse backed out of the room, looking up and down the hall. “Stroke victim, right?”

The nurse said, “He couldn’t have gotten far…”

Odessa stared at Blackwood. She was terrified suddenly, desperately afraid for Solomon, and starting to panic. “Did it come here for him?” she said.

“We need to find Solomon,” said Blackwood.

“Did it come here specifically for him?” she said.

The nurses looked at her strangely. Blackwood grasped her wrist and guided her out of the room, a few steps down the hallway, before she shook him off.

“Answer me,” she said.

“We need to find him.”

“There are no coincidences,” she said, with a sharp edge, feeling hysteria creep into her voice.

“It came here for him,” admitted Blackwood. He looked a little shaken himself. “We need to find him now.”

“And then what?” she said—but Blackwood pulled her toward the stairs rather than answer.