Chapter 6 - What Daniel Wanted From Rachel
The gas entered Room 214 through narrow vents near the ceiling.
Dr. Cole recognized the sweet chemical smell but could not identify the exact compound.
Marshal Ward pulled his shirt over his nose and fired twice at the lock.
The bullets flattened against reinforced steel.
Daniel watched through the laptop camera.
“You have approximately four minutes,” he said. “Perhaps less for the doctor.”
Ward searched the desk drawers.
“What do you want?”
“Rachel.”
“You’re not getting her.”
“Then Ruth Brennan dies, and you join her shortly afterward.”
Daniel stepped aside.
Ruth sat tied to a wooden chair in what appeared to be an abandoned office. Blood ran from a wound above her eyebrow.
She was conscious.
Her eyes moved toward Daniel with open hatred.
“You coward,” she said.
Daniel struck her across the mouth.
Dr. Cole moved closer to the screen.
“Don’t touch her.”
Daniel smiled.
“The surgeon. You are becoming emotionally involved.”
“I’m telling you she may have a brain injury.”
“And I’m telling you I don’t care.”
Ward found a fire extinguisher beneath the desk. He sprayed it around the air vents, hoping the pressure might slow the gas.
Dr. Cole inspected the room’s refrigeration system.
Old medical storage rooms often had emergency mechanisms to prevent staff from becoming trapped.
He followed a cable behind the largest unit and found a manual release lever concealed near the floor.
It had been wired shut.
He used surgical scissors from a supply cabinet to cut through the wire.
The lever moved halfway.
The door remained closed.
“Again,” Ward said.
Together they pulled.
Metal groaned inside the wall.
The door opened three inches.
Ward forced his fingers into the gap and dragged it wider.
They stumbled into the corridor, coughing.
Security officers reached them moments later.
When Ward returned to the laptop, Daniel’s video feed had disappeared.
Ruth’s chair was empty.
A final message remained.
YOU HAVE TWO HOURS.
Rachel listened to the recording from her hospital bed.
“He doesn’t want me because I can identify him,” she said. “He wants something I have.”
“What?” Ortiz asked.
“I don’t know.”
Ward placed the photograph from Room 214 on the tray beside her.
“Do you recognize any of these women?”
Rachel studied the six nurses.
The circled woman looked like Daniel, but another face seemed familiar.
An older version of that face appeared in a photograph Rachel’s mother had kept inside a locked drawer.
“My grandmother,” Rachel whispered.
Ward leaned closer.
“Which one?”
Rachel pointed to a woman standing at the end of the group.
Her name had been Evelyn Shaw.
Rachel was told that Evelyn died before she was born.
A car accident.
No funeral photographs.
No grave Rachel had ever visited.
“Why would your grandmother be connected to Daniel’s mother?” Ortiz asked.
“I don’t know.”
Rachel thought of the pressed gray flowers.
The altered medical records.
Daniel’s obsession with her blood.
A memory surfaced from the first year of their marriage.
Daniel had taken her to a private clinic, claiming they needed genetic screening before having children.
Rachel did not want the test.
Daniel insisted.
Weeks later, he told her the samples had been lost.
After that, his behavior changed.
He became more possessive.
He moved them away from her family.
He began monitoring every phone call.
“He married me because of my family,” Rachel said.
Ortiz asked what made her believe that.
“The genetic test. He was searching for something.”
Ward contacted the federal forensic team in Room 214.
They compared Rachel’s blood to the stored samples and the names in the database.
Twenty minutes later, the preliminary result arrived.
Rachel’s DNA shared a maternal connection with three unidentified women whose samples had been collected over two decades.
One sample belonged to Elise Monroe.
“She’s related to me?” Rachel asked.
“Possibly a cousin or half-aunt,” Ward said. “We need full testing.”
The laptop from Room 214 contained a file called GRAY LINE.
Inside were dates, hospital admissions, birth records, and photographs of women across several generations.
Many names had been changed.
Several children were listed as deceased but appeared in later photographs under new identities.
At the center of the chart were Evelyn Shaw and a woman called Miriam Carter.
Daniel’s mother.
Both had worked in the old maternity wing.
Both disappeared after the fire.
But there was another name connected to them.
Rachel Carter.
Not the current Rachel.
A baby born twenty-eight years earlier.
The date matched Rachel’s birthday.
Rachel stared at the file.
“My mother gave birth to me at County General.”
May you like
Ward looked at the altered birth certificate on the screen.
“No,” he said. “According to this file, you were born here, in Room 214.”
