How to Tame a Silver Fox – Episode 44
Chris called the hospital while driving faster than Harper had ever seen him drive. Mark’s new room did not answer, and the security feed showed an empty corridor frozen on a repeated seven-second loop.
Harper refused to wait in the car. The moment they reached the hospital, she and Chris entered through separate stairwells while local police sealed the building.
Mark’s room stood open. His bed was empty, the monitors disconnected with professional precision. There was no blood or sign of struggle.
The missing security officer lay unconscious in a supply closet. When he woke, he remembered a nurse asking him to verify medication records, followed by a needle against his neck.
Cross had taken Mark alive. The kidnapping gave him leverage and removed the one witness who could identify his role in Caroline’s case.
Harper found her father’s hospital bracelet beneath the bed with a tiny line written inside: Not the depot. Follow Caroline.
Mark had left the clue deliberately. Caroline’s old investigation mapped Sloane’s foundation properties, including a rural rehabilitation center abandoned after her death.
Chris recognized the center as the place Cross first moved Evan after the Boston fire. The agent had returned to the location where his control began.
Local police wanted to wait for tactical support. Harper feared Cross would move Mark as soon as the grant transfer completed.
“We have forty minutes,” she said. “If the money lands, he no longer needs a hostage.”
Chris divided his team and gave every instruction over channels Cross had never accessed. He asked Harper to remain with Maria at the mobile command post.
She agreed because the role gave her access to Caroline’s property maps and the ability to trace the transfer. Partnership did not require standing beside the gunfire.
At the center, Chris found signs of recent occupation but no guards at the main entrance. The obvious path had been prepared for him.
Harper studied the original blueprints and discovered a therapy wing removed from later plans. A service tunnel connected it to an old chapel behind the property.
She guided Chris through the tunnel while Christina redirected police toward the chapel. Maria monitored the grant account as the transfer entered its final authorization stage.
Cross’s voice broke into the command channel. “You inherited Caroline’s talent for making men believe your plan was theirs,” he told Harper.
His access proved the leak was not limited to one security officer. Cross had entered the system through Mark’s hospital equipment and followed them remotely.
Harper shut down the network, sacrificing contact with Chris to deny Cross control. The last message she sent contained the chapel coordinates.
Maria announced that the grant transfer had changed destination. Instead of Cross’s account, the money was now moving into an account under Harper Reeves’s name.
Cross had built the final frame perfectly: when police found Mark dead, the financial trail would identify his daughter as the person who paid for it.