Chapter 14 - THE WHITE HOUSE BEHIND THE PINES
The mansion belonged to the Vale family trust.
Officially empty since Charles and Miriam Vale died.
Satellite images showed recent vehicles.
Federal agents surrounded the property before sunrise.
Natalie entered with the first team.
The front rooms were immaculate.
No dust.
Fresh flowers.
Food in the kitchen.
Someone lived there.
Upstairs they found children’s rooms.
Six of them.
All empty.
Each bed neatly made.
Each closet stocked with clothing in different sizes.
On one wall hung photographs.
Children from decades of Hawthorne records.
Some had red marks across their images.
Others green circles.
Grace’s photograph had no mark.
Ashley’s and Emily’s were connected by a line.
Below them:
PARKER LINE - ACTIVE.
Natalie felt sick.
In the basement, agents discovered medical equipment.
Not old.
Current.
Genetic sequencing machines.
Freezers.
Computers.
Someone had continued Hawthorne’s work.
They found one frightened caretaker who surrendered immediately.
She claimed she had been hired only three months earlier.
She never knew names.
Children arrived.
Children left.
“Where’s the girl called Anna?” Natalie asked.
The woman shook her head.
“They moved her yesterday.”
“Who did?”
“The Director.”
“Name.”
“I never heard it.”
“What did the Director look like?”
The woman hesitated.
“A woman.”
“Age?”
“Maybe fifty.”
Natalie showed photographs.
Helen.
Laura.
Old Hawthorne staff.
No match.
Then Andrew entered the basement carrying Rebecca’s old nursing yearbook.
The caretaker pointed immediately.
“There.”
A young woman in the photograph.
Name:
DR. MARGARET SLOAN.
Natalie searched.
Margaret Sloan had worked with Rebecca.
No criminal history.
No Hawthorne affiliation officially.
Current occupation:
Director of pediatric genetics at St. Matthew’s Hospital.
The hospital where Ashley had been treated.
The building where Emily appeared outside the window.
The institution from which Grace had been photographed.
They raced back.
Margaret Sloan’s office was empty.
Her computer wiped.
Security footage showed her leaving forty minutes earlier.
She carried one suitcase.
And held the hand of a girl wearing a red hood.
Grace.
An emergency alert went out.
Airport.
Bus stations.
Highways.
Nothing.
Then Natalie received a scheduled email.
Sender:
Rebecca Parker.
Impossible.
The email had been prepared years earlier using a dead-man trigger.
Subject:
IF MARGARET RUNS.
Natalie opened it.
Rebecca’s message was brief.
Margaret is not the beginning either.
If she takes Grace, she will go where our mothers were taken.
There was no location.
Only a photograph.
An old brick institution on a hillside.
Natalie recognized the architecture.
The abandoned St. Agnes Women’s Home.
Closed in 1992.
Three counties away.
Agents mobilized.
Andrew insisted on coming.
Natalie refused.
“You have two daughters who just got you back.”
“And another child out there who may be tied to my wife.”
“You are not police.”
“No.”
Andrew looked at her.
“I’m the man Rebecca trusted to finish what she started.”
Natalie could not argue with that.
They reached St. Agnes after dark.
One vehicle sat outside.
Margaret Sloan’s.
The front doors were open.
Inside, lights burned in the basement.
Natalie heard a child crying.
She ran.
At the bottom of the stairs, Grace stood alone.
Red hood lowered.
Dark mark near her eyebrow.
Natalie approached slowly.
“Grace?”
The girl shook her head.
“My name is Anna.”
“It can be both.”
“Where is Dr. Sloan?”
Grace pointed toward a steel door.
“She said she had to wake someone up.”
Natalie looked at Andrew.
The steel door opened.
Margaret Sloan stepped out.
Her hands were empty.
She looked strangely peaceful.
“You’re too late.”
Natalie raised her weapon.
“For what?”
Margaret smiled.
May you like
“To stop Rebecca’s mother from remembering.”
Behind her, somewhere in the darkness, an elderly woman began screaming Andrew Parker’s name.
