Tomás yanked his arm away, his chest tightening. “‘Catch it,’” he remembered the nurse’s words. Lili’s dying whisper in the ICU. Catch what?
“We’re taking him into custody,” Tomás told Mariana, pulling out his handcuffs. “Call the precinct. Have a transport unit pick him up. I’m going back to the hospital. Dr. Velázquez needs to hear this.”
The Clock is Ticking
Back at San Miguel General Hospital, the atmosphere had shifted from chaotic to clinical dread. The sterile scent of antiseptic couldn’t mask the underlying tension. When Tomás arrived, he found Dr. Cassandra Velázquez standing outside the glass partition of the pediatric ICU, staring at the monitors with a look of profound disbelief.
The digital readouts were a mess of spiking red lines. Lili’s heart rate was climbing, but her blood pressure was cratering. Inside the room, the little girl looked even smaller, swallowed by the massive array of tubes, ventilators, and sensors attached to her fragile body. But it was her abdomen that drew the eye—it seemed even larger now, the skin stretched so taut it looked translucent, revealing a terrifying web of dark, pulsing veins.
“What do the scans show?” Tomás asked, stepping up beside the doctor.
