Unwanted Blood (Harper) novel Chapter 77

Chapter 77

Morning came grey and damp.

I must have dozed off at some point, then I woke to the sound of the front door opening and Colton stepping inside, shaking water off his jacket.

He looked like he hadn’t slept at all.

He walked into the living room and stopped when he saw me. His expression was complicated.

“A bad news, Dylan’s gone,” he said. I sat up straight.

“Last night. After you left. Private ambulance-no plates, no registration. Picked him up from the hospital’s rear loading dock at around midnight. He’d already arranged it. His people moved in behind it and cleared everything.”

I stood. “Cleared what?”

“His room. The small annex building. The ICU files cabinet.” Colton’s jaw tightened. “All of it. Empty. Paperwork, records, phone logs-everything that tied him to that location was gone by the time my contact got in this morning.”

My fists closed. “He took the originals.”

“He took everything.” Colton’s voice was flat. “Every paper record connected to him. He erased himself before you even handed in your evidence.”

Ryder came in from the hallway, rubbing his face. He’d been on second watch. He caught the tail end of the conversation and stopped.

“But he can’t just vanish,” Ryder said. “He needs care. Medical equipment. Staff. He’s not mobile enough to run. He can’t be far.”

“I checked,” Colton said. He pulled out his phone, scrolled, and turned the screen toward us. “Two private medical facilities on the north end of Vancouver Island off the public health records. One of them was bought a few years ago by a shell company.”

He looked at me.“The shell company traces back to Westbrook’s old accounts. The same network Dylan used for the east building purchases.”

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11:43

Chapter 77

I didn’t need to see the map to know what he was saying.

288 Vouchers

“That’s where he is,” I said. “He wouldn’t go somewhere crowded. He wouldn’t go somewhere he doesn’t control. That facility is his endgame, his last card.”

I turned to look at Adrian.

He was sitting up on the sofa now, propped on one elbow, his face pale but his eyes clear. He’d been listening.

“Have you been there?” I asked him.

He thought about it. His brow furrowed. “When I was a kid. He took me once. Told me never to tell anyone.”

I nodded, turned back to Colton. “Send me the address. Don’t tell the police. Not yet. I need to confirm he’s actually there first.”

The next morning, Colton spread the file across the kitchen table.

It was thin, but what was there told a story.

The facility sat at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, perched on a coastal bluff overlooking the Strait of Georgia. Public records listed it as abandoned three years ago. Defunct license. Decommissioned medical registration. No staff on file.

But the utility accounts were still active. Electricity. Water. Both drawing minimal but steady consumption. Enough for a small household. Enough for medical equipment.

Someone was living there.

I pulled up satellite imagery on my laptop and studied the layout. One main building-two stories, flat roof, concrete construction. Two smaller annex buildings set back from the main structure, connected by covered walkways. The property was surrounded by dense coastal forest on the landward side and dropped sharply to rocky shoreline on the other three. A single access road ran north from the nearest highway, five kilometres through trees before it reached the gate.

One road in. One road out.

If Dylan was there, he’d picked his fortress well.

“I’ll send someone to do perimeter recon first,” Ryder said. He was standing behind my chair, looking over my shoulder at the screen. “Confirm he’s actually inside before we plan anything. No point rushing in blind.”

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