Chapter 9 - Follow the River
The phrase follow the river led investigators to an old pumping station north of Millbrook.
Michael Shaw had taken Rachel there once when she was five years old.
They spent an afternoon skipping stones and watching freight trains cross a distant bridge.
Rachel remembered a concrete building covered in vines.
She remembered her father telling her that old places did not disappear simply because people stopped using them.
“They wait,” he had said.
The pumping station had been abandoned for nineteen years.
Federal agents surrounded it before dawn.
No lights were visible inside.
The black SUV stood beneath a collapsed metal awning.
Its doors were unlocked.
Blood found on the back seat belonged to Ruth Brennan.
A search team entered through the lower level.
They found Ruth tied to a pipe but alive. She was dehydrated and disoriented, with a fractured wrist and a deep cut above her eye.
Laura Shaw was not with her.
Neither was Michael.
Ruth was taken to St. Matthew’s under guard.
Rachel saw her three hours later.
The older woman looked small in the hospital bed, but her voice remained sharp.
“I should have hit him harder.”
Rachel took her uninjured hand.
“Daniel?”
“No. Your father.”
Rachel froze.
Ruth remembered being attacked on her porch by a man wearing a mask. He forced her into her car and demanded the brass key.
She told him she had thrown it away.
He drove her to the pumping station.
Hours later, another man arrived.
Michael Shaw.
“He took off the mask,” Ruth said. “They argued.”
“What did they say?”
“Your father said the plan had changed. The masked man said Daniel would kill Rachel if they didn’t finish the exchange.”
“Did you recognize the masked man?”
“No. But your father called him Victor.”
Marshal Ward stepped closer.
“Victor Hale?”
Ruth nodded.
Rachel’s mind resisted the information.
Victor Hale was supposed to be dead.
Daniel had returned with his watch.
Blood had been found near the farmhouse.
“He’s alive,” Rachel said.
Ruth continued.
Victor wanted to trade the key for Rachel.
Michael refused.
They fought.
Ruth struck Victor with a pipe, but he escaped through a drainage tunnel.
Michael untied Ruth and apologized.
Then Laura arrived voluntarily.
The couple left together.
“Did they say where they were going?” Ortiz asked.
Ruth looked at Rachel.
“Your father said he had to reach the first child before Daniel did.”
“The first child from Room 214?”
“I think so.”
“Did he give a name?”
Ruth hesitated.
“He said Adrian.”
Everyone turned toward Dr. Cole.
The surgeon stood near the doorway.
For several seconds, he did not move.
“My first name is Adrian,” he said.
Ward asked for Dr. Cole’s date of birth.
It was three months before Rachel’s.
Hospital records showed he had been born in another state.
But his original birth certificate had been issued six years late following a private adoption.
Dr. Cole’s parents had never discussed the circumstances.
“My sister was also adopted,” he said.
“Were you biologically related?” Ortiz asked.
“We were told we were.”
The Room 214 recording showed six bassinets.
Five children were moved.
The sixth belonged to Gray.
Rachel’s grandmother had been part of the group.
Daniel’s mother had been part of the group.
Dr. Cole might have been one of the infants.
Rachel might have been another.
“What was the purpose?” Rachel asked. “Why change the children’s identities?”
Ward had a possible answer.
The federal team had recovered financial documents from the hidden database.
Twenty-eight years earlier, a pharmaceutical company funded an illegal prenatal drug trial through St. Matthew’s maternity wing.
The trial involved pregnant women who had not given informed consent.
Several infants developed a rare genetic marker associated with unusual resistance to a class of blood disorders.
The company concealed the results.
The nurses in Room 214 may have switched the infants to protect them from further testing.
Or to sell them.
Or both.
“Daniel collected our blood because the trial is still valuable,” Rachel said.
Ward nodded.
“A genetic treatment based on those infants could be worth billions.”
Dr. Cole looked at Rachel’s CT scan on the wall monitor.
“And Daniel’s network used false identities to track the children into adulthood.”
Ruth pulled Rachel closer.
“There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“When your father left, he said Daniel was never the leader.”
Rachel already knew the next question would hurt.
“Who is?”
May you like
Ruth looked toward the covered doorway.
“He said Mother Gray was coming back to the hospital.”
