Chapter 8 - ROOM 614
Damian had powerful attorneys.
Apparently powerful enough to keep us from disappearing into a police station basement.
By sunrise, we were out.
Paul Reeves was dead.
Lieutenant Pike claimed police had responded to reports of gunfire.
Damian didn’t believe him.
Neither did I.
We drove straight to the abandoned wing of St. Catherine’s.
Room 614.
The hallway smelled like dust and bleach.
The lights barely worked.
“This place should be locked,” I said.
“It was.”
Damian held up a broken padlock.
“Someone beat us here.”
We found Room 614 at the end of the corridor.
Old nursery.
Empty bassinets.
Faded animal stickers on the walls.
I hated it immediately.
Then Leah’s rabbit fell from my bag.
I had accidentally taken it.
I picked it up.
Something inside rattled.
I squeezed the stuffed animal.
“What?”
Damian took it.
He opened a tiny seam under one ear.
A key fell into his palm.
We stared at each other.
“Elena,” he said.
On the back wall of the nursery stood a metal cabinet.
The key fit.
Inside were paper files.
Dozens.
Maybe hundreds.
Birth certificates.
Death certificates.
Adoption agreements.
Payments.
Photographs.
I found mine.
EMMA CARTER.
Healthy female birth.
Alive.
Transfer completed 3:42 a.m.
I sat down on the floor.
My daughter had been alive.
While I screamed in a hospital bed, she had been two floors away.
Alive.
Waiting.
And someone had carried her out.
Damian knelt beside me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
My voice broke.
“Don’t say that.”
He stayed quiet.
I cried anyway.
Not softly.
Not beautifully.
Three years of grief came out ugly.
I hit the cabinet.
Then again.
“They let me think she was dead.”
Damian caught my hands before I broke them.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right.”
That stopped me.
He looked at the files.
“Elena found this room.”
I wiped my face.
“She hid the key in Leah’s rabbit.”
“Which means she expected someone to search everything else.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Footsteps.
Damian turned.
“Behind me.”
“I hate when you say that.”
“Complain later.”
The door opened.
Dr. Victor Mercer entered.
He looked older than his photograph.
And terrified.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”
Damian raised his gun.
“Give me one reason.”
Mercer looked at me.
“Emma.”
My skin crawled.
“You remember me.”
“I remember all of you.”
“All of who?”
“The mothers.”
I wanted to kill him.
I understood in that moment how ordinary people become dangerous.
“You signed my baby’s death certificate.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Vincent threatened my family.”
“Forty-seven times?”
Mercer closed his eyes.
“It didn’t start that way.”
“Of course it didn’t.”
He looked at Damian.
“Elena discovered everything.”
“You helped kill her?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
Mercer’s face tightened.
“Pike arranged the crash.”
We already suspected it.
Then Mercer added something we didn’t.
“But Vincent wasn’t the one who ordered it.”
Damian lowered the gun slightly.
“What?”
Mercer looked at me.
“The person who ordered Elena Caruso’s death…”
He swallowed.
“…was a woman.”
“Who?”
He reached into his coat.
Damian raised the gun again.
“Slowly.”
Mercer pulled out a photograph.
He handed it to me.
I looked down.
My heart stopped.
The woman in the photograph was standing beside Vincent outside St. Catherine’s.
I knew her face.
I had known it my entire life.
“My mother?”
May you like
Mercer nodded.
“Your mother was part of it from the beginning.”
