Chapter 9 - THE WOMAN FROM CHILD SERVICES
Dr. Lena Cho arrived at 6:03 a.m.
She wore a navy suit, carried a government identification folder, and introduced herself as a child welfare crisis specialist. Everything about her appeared legitimate except that she did not ask Amanda what had happened.
Instead, she looked at Ethan’s drawing.
“Where did he see the second boy?”
Amanda closed the sketchbook. “You tell me.”
Lena’s eyes lifted. “Gabriel called you.”
It was not a question.
Amanda glanced toward the guards outside. “Are they yours?”
“No. One belongs to the hospital. The other was hired by Vivian Vale’s attorney forty minutes ago.”
Amanda’s stomach tightened.
Lena opened her folder, revealing two identification cards. The first named her as a child services investigator. The second identified her as a federal medical crimes consultant.
“Which one is real?” Amanda asked.
“Both. Neither will keep your son safe if we stay here.”
“Richard is in intensive care.”
“He has been moved.”
Amanda stared at her. “Moved where?”
“His transport order says neurological imaging. The receiving department has no appointment for him.”
Amanda crossed to the door. The Vivian-hired guard stood at the far end of the hall speaking into his sleeve.
“When?”
“Seven minutes ago.”
Amanda grabbed her coat and the envelope containing the first paternity report. “We are going after him.”
Lena stepped in front of her. “That is what they expect.”
“He protected Ethan.”
“And he remains neurologically conditioned. In the wrong hands, he can be made to bring Ethan to them willingly.”
“He warned me about seven bells.”
Lena’s expression shifted. “Then part of him remembers the original protocol.”
“What happens at seven?”
“The subject accepts the next recognized authority as primary command.”
“Recognized by what?”
“Voice, scent, visual pattern, and blood marker.”
Amanda looked at Ethan. “Blood marker?”
Lena nodded toward the keycard hidden in Amanda’s coat lining. “The chamber archive contains the identities of the original handlers. Vivian was one. Corwin was another.”
“Was Samuel?”
Lena did not answer quickly enough.
Amanda’s voice lowered. “Was my father one of them?”
“He designed the financial concealment system before he understood what the program did. Later, he tried to expose it.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Yes,” Lena said. “Samuel Hart was listed as a handler.”
The truth hurt because it was complicated. Amanda wanted her father to be innocent, a rescuer trapped outside the evil. Instead, he had entered it, helped it function, then tried to destroy it.
“What was your role?”
“I was a pediatric research fellow. I falsified death records for three children so I could move them out of the program.”
“You expect me to trust someone who falsified children’s deaths?”
“I expect you to recognize that clean hands are rare in dirty institutions.”
A hospital announcement interrupted them.
Code Silver. East wing.
Armed threat.
The guard outside Ethan’s room turned toward the stairwell.
Lena moved immediately. She opened the bathroom service panel, revealing a maintenance corridor.
“This way.”
Amanda lifted Ethan from bed. He woke confused but did not cry.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“We are going to find him.”
They entered the corridor moments before two men in medical scrubs reached the room.
Through the vented panel, Amanda saw one of them remove a syringe from his pocket.
Lena led them down a service elevator to the basement laundry dock. A plain white van waited with its rear doors open.
Amanda stopped.
“No.”
Lena turned. “We have less than a minute.”
“I will not place my son in an unmarked van because a stranger tells me to.”
“Good.”
Lena tossed her the keys.
“You drive.”
They climbed in. Amanda secured Ethan in a child seat and drove through the delivery exit as hospital security vehicles rushed toward the opposite wing.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the only place Vivian believes no longer exists.”
“The pediatric research wing?”
“The building above it.”
They drove thirty miles north into wooded hills. Lena directed Amanda onto an abandoned access road ending at a concrete structure overgrown with vines.
A faded sign read VALE CHILD DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION.
Ethan stared through the window.
“I know this place,” he said.
Amanda turned. “You have never been here.”
“Yes, I have.”
“When?”
“In my dreams.”
Lena unlocked the rusted entrance with a biometric key.
Inside, dust covered the reception desk, but fresh footprints crossed the floor.
They followed them to an elevator without visible buttons.
Amanda inserted the chamber keycard.
The elevator opened.
A single level glowed beneath the display.
Minus seven.
As they descended, a child began singing through the elevator speaker.
Ethan joined the melody.
Amanda had never heard the song.
Lena had.
Her face went white.
“That is the orientation hymn,” she whispered. “Only children raised inside the program know it.”
The doors opened.
At the end of a bright underground corridor stood Richard.
He was no longer wearing a hospital gown. He wore a black suit, his hair neatly combed, his face calm.
Vivian stood beside him holding the silver bell.
She rang the seventh tone.
May you like
Richard smiled at Amanda.
Then he said, “Bring me the boy.”
