Page 93 of DFF: Delicate Freakin' Flower

Chapter 29

Webb

We were still glued to the screens when my phone rang again—Eddie’s name flashing across it.

I snatched it up, my heart instantly kicking into overdrive, pounding faster with a rush of adrenaline I couldn’t stop. “Eddie?”

“She’s gone,” he answered bluntly, his voice low and tight. “Ira, too. Neither of them is in the hospital, and the nurses are losing their minds. The doctors are freaking out because a patient with a skull fracture is missing from her bed.”

For half a second, the world tilted on its axis. Gone?

I forced myself to stay calm so I could think. “Was Gabby stable the last time you checked?”

“She was resting. Her vitals were steady, and she was sound asleep. I only stepped away for five minutes—to deal with a guy who’d been lingering too long outside the ICU. But when I got back…she was gone.”

Across the room, Malcolm, who was still perched with his laptop on the dining table like it was a throne, raised his hand. “Uh...don’t panic.”

The rest of the room froze. Those damned words naturally meant we all instantly panicked.

“What?” I barked.

Malcolm kept typing, fast and loose, eyes flickering over lines of stolen data. “I hacked her medical records.”

There was a beat of stunned silence.

Marcus made a strangled sound. “You what?”

“Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Malcolm snapped, waving a hand. “You wanted answers, I got ‘em. No HIPAA rules apply when it's a family crisis.”

Even Benny leaned back in his chair, eyebrows raised high enough to disappear under his messy hair.

Malcolm ignored them and kept going. “She was scheduled to be moved out of the ICU tomorrow morning. According to the records, she was stable. The last MRI showed no new bleeding, no signs of pressure or complications.”

Relief punched me square in the chest—but it didn’t last long.

“There’s something else.” Malcolm’s fingers tapped in a blur. “There’s a withdrawal logged in the pharmacy inventory under her account. But it’s weird, it wasn’t a nurse pulling it the normal way—it’s a flagged transaction.”

“What medication?” I asked.

He typed faster, screens flashing. “Cross-referencing... Okay, looks like it’s pain management stuff. Oral antibiotics, ibuprofen, Tylenol, anti-inflammatory injections.”

“All things she’d need for recovery if she left the hospital,” Marcus pointed out.

Jesse leaned over and whispered to Elijah, “She stole her own meds. Savage.”

Elijah, ever the calm one, murmured back, “Or someone helped her.”

“Find her,” I growled through gritted teeth. “Check the security cameras. Do whatever it takes.”

Malcolm grinned like he lived for moments like this. “Already on it.”

He hacked through the hospital’s internal security system as if it were a kid’s clubhouse. Five minutes later, he whistled low and waved me over.

“You gotta see this.”

He pulled up grainy footage from one of the security cameras, the view fixed on the hallway just outside Gabby’s room. The angle wasn’t perfect, but it captured everything: a figure in scrubs pushing a gurney with what appeared to be a body covered by a sheet.

I leaned in, squinting at the screen. The person was older, moved with steady hands, and had a slight limp.

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