Elena Rostova adjusted the cold-forged silver bell of her Littmann Cardiology Stethoscope and watched the entrance mat from the head of Aisle 1.
The footsteps crossing the threshold didn’t match.
First came the crisp, heel-toe click of an expensive men’s leather dress shoe. Half a beat later came the wet, dragging slap of a bare human heel wrapped in soaked paper gauze.
Click-step, slap-drag. Click-step, slap-drag.
Elena had worked the graveyard shift in St. Jude’s Hospital Ward 4B for four years before Clara Vance was admitted to Bed 412. She knew the sound of a post-op patient dragging an IV pole at three in the morning, and she knew the brisk walk of an administrator coming down to cut nurse overtime.
Hearing both footsteps come out of the same body made the scar across her left knuckles itch.
At Station 4 beside the front plate-glass doors, Marcus “Mac” Cole stood with his boots planted inside the yellow safety line of the entrance mat. His stainless-steel prosthetic left forearm was raised at chest height, the jaws of his Route 04 railway ticket-punch cocked open.
“Hold it right there,” Mac growled as the shape stepped through the doorway. “Let’s see a transfer or a shopping basket.”
