The line on the portable heart monitor flattened with one long electronic tone.

For a fraction of a second, Sofia Reyes stopped breathing too.

Then training took over.

She climbed fully into the SUV, lowered Elena Luján across the seat, and pressed two fingers against the side of her neck.

Nothing.

She opened Elena’s airway, ordered Mateo’s guard to begin compressions, and tore through the medical kit beneath the opposite seat.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” she said.

Mateo’s face had gone colorless beneath the hard calm he wore like armor.

“I found her in a service corridor at St.

Catherine’s.

Two men were moving her toward a loading dock.

They ran when my security team arrived.”

“Was she conscious?”

“For less than a minute.

She said someone injected her.”

Sofia found a glucose meter, punctured Elena’s fingertip, and watched the number appear.

Twenty-eight.

A normal fasting level should have been far higher.

At twenty-eight, Elena’s brain and heart were being starved of the glucose they needed to function.

“Dextrose,” Sofia said.

“There should be a prefilled syringe in this kit.”

One of the guards found it.

Sofia checked the seal, connected it to the IV already taped inside Elena’s elbow, and pushed the medication slowly.

“Keep compressing.”

Mateo leaned close enough that Sofia could see the exhaustion beneath his gray eyes.

“Will it work?”

“It has to.”

The monitor gave a single beat.

Then another.

Elena’s body jerked as she dragged air into her lungs.

Sofia placed an oxygen mask over her face and checked her pupils.

A fresh puncture mark sat beneath the edge of the hospital bracelet.

Whoever had injected her had tried to hide the evidence under the plastic band.

The bracelet carried Elena’s name, a hospital identification number, and the time 3:04 a.m.

It also listed Sofia Reyes as the attending nurse.

At 3:04, Sofia had been in Exam Room 4 tying the final stitch beneath Mateo’s ribs.

At least six people had seen her there.

The emergency room cameras would have recorded it.

Unless those recordings had already been erased.

“They’re framing me,” Sofia said.

Mateo looked at his unconscious sister.

“They expected her to be found dead.

Your name would lead the police to you before anyone asked why she was in that corridor.”

Sofia touched the cash still folded inside her scrub pocket.

“And this makes me look paid.”

Mateo’s expression hardened.

He understood immediately.

His attempt to reward her had become another piece of evidence against her.

“I put you in danger.”

“You didn’t create that bracelet.”

“No.

But someone knew I was in your emergency room.

They knew you treated me, and they moved quickly enough to use your name before sunrise.”

Elena stirred weakly.

Her eyes opened for a moment, unfocused and frightened.

“Vale,” she whispered.

Then she lost consciousness again.

Sofia knew the name.

Dr.

Adrian Vale was St.

Catherine’s chief medical officer, a celebrated surgeon whose face appeared on donor brochures and charity billboards throughout Chicago.

He shook hands with politicians, gave interviews about patient dignity, and walked hospital corridors as though he had personally invented medicine.

He also had administrator-level access to patient records.

Mateo handed Sofia a phone.

“My people recovered this from the service corridor camera before the feed disappeared.”

The video showed Elena