Chapter 2 - DON’T LET HIM TAKE ME
Daniel moved between them.
“How do you know his name?”
Victor’s expression recovered almost instantly.
“I don’t. I thought he was someone else.”
“You said Noah.”
“A donor’s grandson.” Victor glanced down. “What’s going on?”
Noah’s fingers tightened around Daniel’s coat.
“Don’t let him take me.”
Something cold and clean replaced Daniel’s shock.
“Get in the car,” he told the boy.
Victor stepped forward.
“Danny, slow down.”
“Move.”
“You don’t know who this child is.”
Daniel held up the photograph.
Victor looked at it.
Not long.
Just long enough.
“Where did he get that?”
“His mother.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Then you won’t mind me checking.”
Victor reached for Daniel’s arm.
Daniel knocked his hand away.
The board member behind them went quiet.
“Do not touch me again.”
He climbed into the SUV beside Noah and shut the door.
“Drive, Martin.”
Victor tapped the window.
Daniel didn’t look at him.
As the car pulled away, Noah twisted around to watch the hospital disappear.
“Is he following us?”
“Why would he follow us?”
“He came to our place last winter.”
Daniel felt his pulse in his teeth.
“What did he want?”
“To talk to Mom.”
“Did she let him in?”
“No. He talked through the door.” Noah looked down at his hands. “She cried after.”
Daniel’s phone lit up.
VICTOR.
He silenced it.
Noah gave Martin an address across the river, in a neighborhood Daniel only knew from maps.
They stopped outside a brick apartment building with plywood over one ground-floor window.
The boy was out before Martin finished parking.
“Third floor!”
Daniel followed him up a narrow stairwell that smelled like old cooking oil and bleach.
At the landing, Noah stopped.
Their apartment door stood open.
“Mom?”
Daniel pushed past him.
A lamp lay broken beside the couch. One kitchen drawer had been pulled out and dumped on the floor.
“Stay by the door.”
He found her in the bathroom.
For a moment, eleven years vanished.
Caroline was on her side beside the tub, one hand trapped beneath her. Her hair was shorter. There were lines around her mouth he had never seen.
But it was her.
“Call 911,” Daniel told Martin.
He knelt.
“Caroline?”
Her eyes opened.
She stared at him, confused, then terrified.
“Noah?”
“He’s here. He’s safe.”
She caught Daniel’s wrist with surprising strength.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
“What?”
“That you thought we were dead.”
Her gaze shifted toward the hallway.
May you like
Then she pulled him closer.
“Victor found us.”
