Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN IN ROOM 608
Ella refused to wait for a tactical team.
Adrian forced her to wait anyway.
They reached the Grand Meridian before noon. Federal agents covered the exits while hotel security evacuated the sixth floor.
Room 608 was locked from the inside.
No one answered.
An agent opened the door.
The room was empty.
The bed had not been used. A tray of cold food stood near the window. On the desk sat an open laptop displaying a live feed from the Donovan estate.
Every entrance was visible.
So were several interior rooms.
Someone had hacked the security system.
Ella approached the bathroom.
Steam covered the mirror.
Someone had showered recently.
A strand of long blond hair lay near the sink.
Sophie had been blond.
Adrian searched the closet.
Inside hung a dark coat and a maintenance uniform identical to the one Thomas Rourke wore in Lena’s video.
Ella looked at him.
“Rourke’s people used the room.”
“Or someone wants us to think they did.”
A phone rang inside the desk drawer.
Adrian motioned for everyone to remain silent.
Ella opened the drawer.
A prepaid phone vibrated beside a sealed photograph.
The image showed Sophie standing outside a train station.
The date printed in the corner was two days earlier.
Alive.
Older.
Terrified.
Ella answered the phone.
“Sophie?”
A distorted voice replied.
“You should have stayed away from the storage unit.”
“Where is she?”
“You will see her at the gala.”
“Who are you?”
“You ask the wrong question.”
“What is the right one?”
“Why did Daniel trust you with nothing?”
Ella tightened her grip.
“He trusted me.”
“Then why didn’t he tell you about Blackthorn?”
“Because he was trying to protect me.”
The caller laughed softly.
“No. Because he discovered what you were.”
Ella’s stomach tightened.
“What does that mean?”
“Ask Vivian who your real father is.”
The call ended.
Ella stood motionless.
Adrian watched her.
“What did they say?”
She repeated the conversation.
The room seemed to shrink around them.
Adrian spoke carefully.
“Anonymous callers lie.”
“My mother kept enough secrets to make anything possible.”
“Do you believe Charles isn’t your father?”
“I don’t know.”
Ella remembered childhood arguments that stopped whenever she entered a room. Charles treated Mark and Daniel with harsh expectations, but he treated Ella with something colder.
Contempt without disappointment.
As if he had never expected her to belong.
An agent called from the desk.
“We found files on the laptop.”
The folders contained surveillance photographs of judges, officers, hospital administrators, and members of the state government.
Each subject had been documented entering the Donovan estate or Blackthorn Quarry.
One folder was labeled ELLA.
Inside were thousands of images spanning seven years.
Ella leaving work.
Ella meeting Adrian.
Ella visiting Daniel’s grave.
Ella sleeping beside her apartment window.
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“They’ve been inside your home before.”
Another folder contained audio files.
One recording captured Vivian speaking to someone at Saint Catherine’s Chapel six months earlier.
Vivian said, “Ella can never learn the truth about her birth.”
A woman answered, “Charles already knows she is asking questions.”
“Then move Sophie again.”
Ella stopped the recording.
“That’s Evelyn.”
Adrian nodded.
The final file was encrypted.
Its title read PROJECT HEIR.
A technician began working to open it.
Ella searched the browser history.
Someone had repeatedly accessed medical databases, adoption records, and old newspaper archives.
One article appeared more often than any other.
INFANT MISSING AFTER CLINIC FIRE
The report was thirty-one years old.
A private maternity clinic had burned outside Hartwell. Three newborns were believed to have died. One infant had never been found.
The clinic’s director was a young physician named Evelyn Grant.
Ella’s birth certificate was issued two days after that fire.
Her mother’s name appeared on the certificate.
The hospital field was blank.
Adrian read over her shoulder.
“This doesn’t prove anything.”
“No,” Ella said. “But it explains why someone wants me to ask.”
The laptop screen suddenly went black.
A message appeared.
STOP SEARCHING OR SOPHIE DIES TONIGHT.
Then the live feed switched to a dark room.
Sophie sat tied to a chair.
A cloth covered her mouth.
Behind her, an old stone wall displayed a painted black thorn.
Ella moved closer.
“Blackthorn Quarry.”
A digital timer appeared in the corner.
May you like
Eleven hours.
The gala began in ten.
