Chapter 3 - The Tablet’s Secret
While I languished in the holding cell, the hospital staff was busy scrubbing the lobby clean of my presence. A janitor named Elias, a man who had spent thirty years being as invisible as I was, had been mopping the entrance when the stretcher swept past. He had seen the tablet fall from my pocket—the ruggedized, old piece of tech I’d found in the trash behind a tech firm, which I used to track my candy sales and listen to music.
Elias was a man of quiet, aching observations. He knew I wasn't a kidnapper; he’d seen me sharing my bread with stray cats and selling marzipan for pennies just to keep the lights on for Maya. He picked up the tablet, his fingers trembling as he noticed the screen was still active. It wasn't a standard device; it had an automated background recording feature that I’d never figured out how to fully turn off.
He tapped the screen. The device opened to a gallery of video clips. He pressed play on the most recent one, and the breath left his lungs.
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It was a clear, high-definition recording of the park fountain. It showed the moment the woman in the red coat had walked up, dropped Noah—who was already unconscious—on the grass, and leaned down to whisper something into his ear before walking toward a black sedan. But that wasn't the damning part. The camera angle shifted as I had set it down on the bench, and it captured a perfect, crystal-clear close-up of the woman’s face as she checked her reflection in her phone before leaving.
Elias gasped, his heart hammering against his ribs. He knew that face. He’d seen it on the hospital’s 'Employee of the Month' plaques in the lobby for the last three years. It was the face of Mrs. Sterling, the Hospital Administrator, the very woman who had personally overseen Noah’s emergency care and who was currently standing in the lobby, briefing the police on how to handle "the opportunistic street girl."
