Three patients had died in the east wing this month, and Maggie Jones was not allowed to see a single body. She had been a nurse at Harborview Hospital for six years, and she knew every ward, every chart, every locked drug cabinet. But the east wing stayed sealed. Its doors wore chains and a padlock older than her badge. Nobody on staff held the key. Nobody admitted sending patients inside. Yet the names kept vanishing from the ledger, one by one. She tried the supervisor first. He told her the wing was closed for repairs and walked away fast. She checked the key board in the records office. The hook marked EAST WING was empty, the paint beneath it worn pale. Someone used that key. Someone just wasn't her. So Maggie went outside, around the back of the building, where the old asylum section joined the hospital. Vines covered broken windows. Boards crossed the front doors. She walked the wall twice, pressing each plank, hunting a gap. A camera clicked behind her. A woman stood in a pressed gray coat, clipboard against her hip, a camera on a strap at her chest. She photographed a cracked window frame without looking at Maggie. "Structural decay," she said aloud, and wrote something down. Maggie saw the page. It was covered in question marks, inked in crowded rows, none of them explained. "You're the investigator," Maggie said. "They brought you in for the deaths." "I document buildings." The woman lowered the camera. "Fiona Aldred. And you're the nurse who's been asking at the key board." Maggie's stomach dropped. "Word travels." "It does." Fiona studied her a moment, then looked back at the boarded door. "Front's chained. Supervisor keeps the only key, and he won't give it to either of us." She tilted her head toward the far corner of the wall. "But a building this old always has a second way in." She led Maggie to a low iron grate half buried in weeds. A coal chute, Fiona said, feeding the basement below the east wing. The padlock on it had rusted through years ago. Fiona lifted the grate with both hands. It groaned open onto dark stairs. "I can't put this in my report," Fiona said. "If anyone asks, you found it alone." Maggie climbed down. The air inside was cold and wet and smelled of rot. Her flashlight found peeling plaster and a row of iron bed frames. She had gotten past the locked doors at last. Then her light caught the far wall. Three gurneys stood there, each with a sheet pulled over a shape. Above them, bolted to the brick, hung a steel hospital safe with a heavy locked door. Fresh scratches marked the keyhole. Someone had been down here recently. Someone had locked something away. Maggie stepped forward. Behind her, the grate scraped shut.