Chapter 6 - The Doctor's Photograph
Mateo enlarged the photograph until the pixels blurred. The woman in the mirror could have been Camila, but the angle hid most of her face. One pearl earring caught the clinic light. A hand rested on the doorframe.
Rafael called Elena. No answer.
He called the clinic's secure desk. A receptionist said Dr. Navarro had arrived with two children and an elderly woman, then requested complete privacy. Five minutes later the clinic's cameras went offline.
Mateo left Dr. Voss locked in the study with a trusted guard. He crossed the atrium under Camila's watch, refusing to hurry. If she knew the clinic location, panic would only tell her that the photograph had worked.
"Have you decided to cooperate?" Camila asked.
"I decided you were right about one thing," Mateo replied. "Someone has been editing what I see."
Her smile returned.
He allowed the estate guards to escort him to his bedroom, supposedly for rest. Once inside, he entered the concealed elevator behind the wardrobe and descended to the garage. Rafael waited in an unmarked car.
During the drive, Mateo replayed every conversation with Elena. She had treated Valeria after the twins were born. She had signed the children's health reports. She had been the first person he called tonight.
"Voss may have lied," Rafael said. "He knew mentioning Elena would hurt you."
"Or Valeria chose a doctor Camila had already compromised."
The clinic occupied a renovated convent outside the city. Its gate stood open. The receptionist lay unconscious behind the desk, breathing but unresponsive. A sweet chemical odor lingered in the hallway.
They found Isabel in the laundry room, bound to a chair with medical tape. Her forehead bled.
"Elena fought them," Isabel said when Mateo freed her. "The woman in the pearls was not Camila. She wore a wig. Two men took the girls through the chapel."
"Where is Elena?"
"I heard her scream."
The chapel doors were chained from the inside. Rafael cut them. Beyond the altar, a stone stairway descended to the old crypt. Blood marked the steps.
At the bottom, they found Elena beside an open service tunnel. She had been struck in the shoulder and injected with a tranquilizer, but she remained conscious.
"I am not the second doctor," she said before Mateo could ask. "Voss used my digital signature on the forms. I discovered it last week. That is why I agreed to come tonight. I wanted proof."
"The girls?"
"They took them in a white ambulance. Lucia bit one of the men. Sofia dropped this."
Elena opened her palm. A silver button lay there, engraved with the crest of St. Aurelia Academy, the private school Camila had attended as a child.
Rafael traced the ambulance through traffic cameras. It traveled north, then vanished near the old academy grounds. The school had closed twelve years earlier after a fire. Camila's charitable foundation now owned the property.
Mateo called Camila from the clinic.
"You moved them," he said.
She did not pretend ignorance. "You removed them first. I merely placed them somewhere secure."
"Let me speak to Sofia."
"Sign the emergency trust transfer. Resign as managing guardian. Then you can see them."
"You starved six-year-old children for voting rights."
Camila's voice hardened. "Do not reduce this to money. Valeria stole something that belongs to the Alvarez bloodline. The girls know where she hid it. They repeat her song when they dream. I needed them frightened enough to remember."
"What did Valeria take?"
"Ask our father."
Mateo's father, Hector Alvarez, had been dead for eight years.
Camila ended the call.
Rafael's laptop chimed. A traffic camera had captured the ambulance entering St. Aurelia's service road. A second vehicle followed.
The driver was Julian Mercer, the family attorney.
In the passenger seat sat Dr. Voss.
The guard Mateo left at the mansion called seconds later, breathless.
"Mr. Alvarez, Voss is gone. Someone opened the study from inside the wall. And your sister has disappeared."
Mateo stared toward the dark northern hills.
Then his phone received a live video.
During the drive north, Mateo called the twins through a hidden channel in the kidnapper's video system. The connection lasted only eight seconds. Sofia whispered that Lucia was cold and that the room smelled like wet stone. Mateo told her to count doors, listen for trains, and remember that fear could give information without giving control. Sofia answered with the seriousness of a much older child. Then Lucia pushed close to the microphone and said she had hidden a spoon in her sock. The line died. Mateo closed his eyes. A spoon was not a weapon, but to Lucia it represented preparation, proof that she was no longer waiting helplessly for food or rescue. Rafael promised they would bring both girls home. Mateo corrected him. They would bring them home and then rebuild what home meant.
May you like
Sofia and Lucia sat beneath a stained-glass window. Their hands were tied.
Behind them, an old projector began playing footage of their mother.
