"It wasn't."
Maya described the cameras she had seen, the staff access keypad, the direction in which Isaiah's backpack had disappeared, and the way Harland had looked toward the storage room before approaching her.
Paul let several seconds pass. "What do you want me to do?"
Before Maya could answer, another call appeared on her screen. The number belonged to the hospital. "I'll call you back."
She ended the call and answered the incoming one. "Hello."
A man spoke quietly. "Are you Isaiah Williams's mother?"
"Yes."
"I need to tell you something, but I can't give you my name."
Maya sat straighter. "Then don't. Tell me what you know."
The man hesitated, apparently surprised by the answer. "The lockdown is fake."
Maya's expression did not change, but her grip tightened slightly around the phone. "Explain."
"I work with hospital systems. I can see the emergency access controls. There's no security event logged by hospital command. No emergency administrator approved a lockdown."
"Who activated it?"
"Police liaison credentials."
Maya looked toward the ER entrance again. The doors that normally opened automatically remained shut while a security guard redirected two visitors toward another part of the building.
"What exactly did they restrict?"
"Visitor access to part of the emergency department, staff movement near the isolation corridor, and camera routing in two sections."
"Camera routing?"
"The feed outside your son's room was redirected."
"By whom?"
"I can't prove who physically entered the command, but it came through the liaison system."
Maya lowered her voice. "What are they doing with Isaiah?"
The man was silent for a moment. "They aren't focused on him."
"What does that mean?"
"They took his backpack into a storage room with no active camera coverage."
Maya's eyes narrowed. "Are they searching it?"
"Yes."
"For what?"
"I don't know. I can only see system activity and door access."