Chapter 12 - The Missing Archive
Arthur knew.
When Alex showed him photographs of the hidden funeral-home facility, Arthur began crying.
He pointed repeatedly toward one chamber.
Room six.
Agents searched it again.
Nothing.
Then Arthur demanded paper.
His handwriting was slow and uneven.
NOT ROOM.
NUMBER.
“Six?” Alex asked.
Arthur shook his head.
Then wrote.
SUBJECT 6.
Alex stared.
“Who was Subject Six?”
Arthur wrote one name.
EMILY.
Alex looked at Rachel, who was recovering nearby under federal protection.
She went pale.
“No.”
“You know her?”
Rachel sat slowly.
“Emily Shaw.”
“Calvin Shaw?”
“His sister.”
“What happened to her?”
Rachel looked toward Arthur.
“You told me she died.”
Arthur shook his head violently.
“No.”
Rachel stood.
“Arthur, where is she?”
His hand trembled over the paper.
BEATRICE.
Alex turned toward the detained funeral director.
Beatrice’s smile vanished.
“Where is Emily?” Grant asked.
Beatrice said nothing.
Arthur wrote again.
SHE KNOWS ARCHIVE.
Alex looked at Rachel.
“What archive?”
Rachel sat down.
“The original Harbor archive.”
“We found boxes at the lake house.”
“Those are observation files.”
“What’s the original?”
“Vale’s private records.”
“Financial?”
“Names.”
“What names?”
Rachel looked at Alex.
“Everyone who funded Harbor.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds.”
Politicians.
Executives.
Doctors.
University researchers.
Defense contractors.
The project had never been one man.
It had been an ecosystem.
Alex looked at Beatrice.
“Where is Emily?”
“I don’t know.”
He stepped closer.
“Arthur says you do.”
“Arthur has brain damage.”
Arthur slammed his fist against the wheelchair.
Beatrice smirked.
Then Alex remembered the passports.
Calvin Shaw.
A false identity.
A man declared dead.
“Calvin was hiding through your funeral home.”
Beatrice said nothing.
“Did Emily disappear the same way?”
Silence.
Alex looked at Grant.
“Search every burial handled by Beatrice involving a woman named Emily Shaw.”
Grant nodded to an agent.
Beatrice laughed.
“You think we used the same name?”
Alex looked back.
“No.”
Her laughter stopped.
“You’re right.”
He took out the red ledger.
“One code repeats every year on April seventeenth.”
Beatrice’s eyes flickered.
Alex saw it.
“E.S.?”
Nothing.
“Not Emily Shaw.”
He flipped pages.
“Every April seventeenth, BCF receives a payment of nine thousand dollars, then sends exactly eight thousand four hundred to an account marked R-17.”
Rachel whispered, “Room seventeen.”
Alex looked at her.
“Harbor only had twelve rooms.”
“The original building did.”
“Where was Room Seventeen?”
Rachel’s face emptied.
“Not at the lake.”
“Where?”
“The hospital.”
“What hospital?”
She looked at Beatrice.
“Bellweather Children’s Institute.”
Grant immediately began searching.
The institute had closed twenty-one years earlier after a fire.
Alex almost laughed.
Another fire.
Another convenient death of records.
The property had later become a private rehabilitation center.
Current owner:
Vale Strategic Holdings.
Federal agents obtained entry before sunset.
The original lower level remained behind a concrete renovation wall.
Room Seventeen was still there.
Inside sat a bed.
A desk.
A cassette recorder.
And a woman.
Alive.
Sixty years old.
Thin.
White hair.
She looked at Rachel and began sobbing.
“Rachel?”
Rachel collapsed beside her.
“Emily.”
Alex watched from the doorway.
Emily Shaw had been hidden for thirty years.
After doctors examined her, she agreed to speak.
“William kept me because I knew where Arthur put the archive.”
Arthur leaned forward.
Emily smiled at him.
“You stubborn bastard.”
Arthur laughed weakly.
Alex said, “Where did he put it?”
Emily looked at him.
“So you’re Alexander.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t remember me.”
“No.”
“You used to steal apples from my lunch tray.”
Alex almost smiled.
“Where is the archive?”
Emily’s expression turned serious.
“I don’t know.”
Everyone stopped.
“But you said—”
“I knew once.”
“What changed?”
“You did.”
Alex frowned.
Emily pointed toward his head.
“Arthur couldn’t trust paper. He couldn’t trust banks. He couldn’t trust police.”
“What did he do?”
“He taught you the location.”
Alex stared.
“I was a child.”
“You were the only person Vale could never predict.”
“I don’t remember.”
“They made sure of that.”
Alex looked at Arthur.
His father lowered his eyes.
“So the archive location is inside my erased memories.”
Emily nodded.
“And William has spent thirty years waiting for you to remember.”
Alex’s phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A video arrived.
Lily was sitting at a table drawing.
Alex spun toward the corridor.
“She’s at the safe house.”
Grant called immediately.
No answer.
The video continued.
Lily looked at someone behind the camera.
Then smiled uncertainly.
A man’s voice spoke.
“Tell your father hello.”
Lily whispered, “Hi, Daddy.”
Alex’s blood turned to ice.
The camera rotated.
An elderly man sat across from her.
Alive.
William Vale.
His biological father.
William smiled into the camera.
“Hello, Alexander.”
Then he placed an old photograph on the table.
May you like
A photograph of Arthur standing beside a stone church.
William said, “It’s time you remembered where he hid my archive.”
