Chapter 5 - The Night the Jail Went Dark
Audrey fired twice.
The masked man retreated into the corridor.
She kicked the interview-room door closed and dragged a metal chair against it. Julian crawled beneath the table, pale and shaking.
“Who is he?” Audrey demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“You told me they were coming.”
“I didn’t know when.”
The emergency lights flickered.
Outside, gunfire moved toward the medical holding wing where Samuel Vale had been placed under observation after complaining of chest pain.
Audrey called Mara.
No response.
The security radio on the wall emitted only static.
The building’s internal network had failed at the same moment as the power.
This was not an ordinary escape attempt.
It was an extraction.
Audrey checked the magazine in her weapon.
“Stay here.”
Julian grabbed her ankle.
“They’ll kill me.”
“You broke Chloe’s nose and tried to cut an implant from her body.”
“I didn’t know they would hurt her.”
“You were holding a knife.”
“I was trying to save myself.”
Audrey pulled free.
“Then start saving yourself by telling the truth.”
She moved into the corridor.
A detention officer lay near the control desk, blood spreading beneath his shoulder. He was alive. Audrey dragged him behind a concrete partition and pressed his emergency transmitter.
Footsteps approached from the south hall.
Audrey aimed.
Mara appeared, holding a shotgun taken from the armory.
“You alive?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Vale’s gone.”
“How?”
“Two attackers entered through the courthouse tunnel. They had county access codes and police uniforms.”
“Where are they now?”
“One vehicle left the rear gate. Patrol units are following.”
Audrey looked toward the open medical wing.
“What about the prisoners?”
“Contained except for Vale.”
A loud explosion struck the rear of the building.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Mara swore.
Audrey’s phone vibrated.
The hospital.
She answered.
A security officer spoke rapidly.
“Investigator Mercer, there’s been an attempted breach on the intensive-care floor.”
Audrey’s blood turned cold.
“Chloe?”
“She’s safe. We moved her to a secure room.”
“Who attempted the breach?”
“A woman claiming to be her mother.”
Evelyn.
“Detain her.”
“She fled before police arrived.”
Audrey looked at Julian’s interview room.
The door stood open.
The room was empty.
During the confusion, Julian had escaped through a service passage behind the observation wall.
Mara found a broken handcuff chain on the floor.
“He had help,” she said.
Audrey returned to the table.
A message had been scratched into the metal with the broken handcuff edge.
314 IS NOT A PLACE.
Beneath it, Julian had drawn the same divided-circle symbol from Chloe’s notebook.
The pursuit vehicle carrying Vale was discovered twenty minutes later near the river.
It had crashed into a concrete barrier and caught fire.
The bodies of two armed men were found inside.
Vale was not among them.
Neither was Julian.
By dawn, state police had established roadblocks across the county.
Audrey remained at the jail until investigators completed the initial scene review. The attackers had entered using security credentials assigned to a retired deputy who died three years earlier.
The system showed that his access card had been activated six times during the previous month.
Someone had been testing the building’s defenses.
Audrey drove to the hospital after sunrise.
Chloe had been moved to a private surgical floor under an assumed name. Four officers guarded the corridor.
She was awake when Audrey entered.
“Julian escaped,” Audrey said.
Chloe closed her eyes.
“I knew he would.”
“Why?”
“Because Mom always gets him out.”
“Vale was taken too.”
Chloe opened her eyes again.
“Then they have both sides.”
“What does that mean?”
“Vale knows what the implant is. Julian knows where Dad’s case was hidden.”
“And you?”
“I’m the only person who can open it.”
Audrey sat down.
“You said the key was inside you.”
“Not exactly.”
Chloe touched the side of her head.
“The implant responds to me.”
“How?”
“I hear things.”
Audrey said nothing.
“Not voices,” Chloe continued. “Signals. When certain machines are near me, I feel pressure behind my eyes. Sometimes I see numbers.”
“Have you told a doctor?”
“Vale was the doctor.”
A nurse entered to check the monitors. After she left, Chloe whispered:
“When Mr. Gray came to the hospital, the pressure started. I saw the number 314 and a set of coordinates.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I wrote them on the sheet before he entered.”
The original treatment room had been sealed as a crime scene. Mara retrieved the discarded bedding and found faint numbers written in blood near the bottom edge.
Audrey entered the coordinates into a map.
They led to an abandoned research campus seventy miles north of the city.
The property had once belonged to Mercer Adaptive Technologies.
Their father’s company.
The facility closed two months before he disappeared.
Audrey showed Chloe the location.
Her sister stared at it for a long moment.
“I’ve been there.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“You would remember.”
“No.”
Chloe’s breathing quickened.
“I remember white walls. A glass floor. Dad arguing with Mom.”
“What were they arguing about?”
Chloe pressed both hands to her temples.
“She said he could not take me away.”
Audrey leaned forward.
“Why would Dad take you?”
May you like
Chloe looked at her with tears in her eyes.
“Because Evelyn Mercer isn’t my mother.”
