Chapter 19 - THE MAN IN THE TASK FORCE
They found Rourke before sunset.
Not because he made a mistake.
Because Vale abandoned him.
Rourke walked into a police station thirty miles away and asked for Detective Brooks.
He carried no weapon.
He asked for protection.
Daniel watched from behind the interview glass.
Rourke looked ordinary.
That disturbed him most.
He looked like a man who could have stood beside them at the dinner table.
Brooks sat across from him.
"How long?"
Rourke rubbed his face.
"Nine years."
"You sold federal information for nine years?"
"I sold information to Vale."
"That is not better."
Rourke looked toward the glass.
"He knows Daniel is watching."
Daniel felt nothing.
Rourke continued.
"Vale is shutting Haven down."
Brooks laughed.
"He has an unusual way of doing it."
"He is not protecting the project anymore."
"What is he doing?"
"Selling it."
The room became quiet.
Rourke explained.
Project Haven's original investors were gone.
Some were dead.
Others had withdrawn decades ago.
Vale had kept the data.
Thousands of medical records.
Family trees.
DNA profiles.
Fertility histories.
He had quietly offered access to private biomedical companies.
"What about Lucy?" Brooks asked.
"Proof."
"Of what?"
"That Haven's prediction model worked."
Sarah watched from the next room.
Her hands shook.
Rourke continued.
"Vale needs one living subject whose markers match Thomas Hale's original projection."
"H18-3."
"Yes."
"What happens to Lucy?"
Rourke hesitated.
Daniel entered the interview room.
Brooks stood.
"Daniel."
He did not care.
He looked at Rourke.
"What happens to her?"
"Nothing if Vale can get enough samples."
"If?"
Rourke looked away.
Daniel slammed both hands onto the table.
"If?"
"If the buyers require independent verification, they will want new blood and marrow samples."
Elizabeth heard through the speaker.
She covered Lucy's ears too late.
Daniel leaned closer.
"Where is Vale?"
"I do not know."
"Then you are useless."
"I know where the archive is."
Brooks looked at him.
"What archive?"
"Archive Seven."
Northbridge Women's Clinic.
Vale planned to erase it within twenty four hours.
Rourke had been ordered to recover the transfer page and bring it there.
"Why surrender?"
Rourke gave a weak laugh.
"Because Vale sent someone to my apartment before I could leave."
"You were expendable."
"I finally understood that."
Brooks arrested him formally.
His cooperation would not erase what he had done.
Daniel was glad.
Too many people in this story had confused explanation with innocence.
That evening Sarah finally told Elizabeth why she disappeared in 1998.
Vale had shown her photographs of Elizabeth.
But there had been another threat.
"He told me if I stayed, they would enroll you."
Elizabeth frowned.
"Enroll me?"
"In Haven."
"I was already in their records."
"Observation was different."
Sarah struggled to continue.
"They wanted custody."
Elizabeth stared.
Sarah had placed her with a trusted foster family under another name.
Then another.
Then another.
Every move designed to break the trail.
"You made me grow up thinking nobody wanted me."
Sarah cried.
"I know."
"You could have sent one letter."
"I was afraid the letter would lead them to you."
"You could have found another way."
"Yes."
Elizabeth's voice shook.
"You saved my life and ruined part of it at the same time."
Sarah nodded.
"Yes."
It was the answer Elizabeth needed.
Not an excuse.
Just truth.
Across the room, Eleanor heard it.
So did Daniel.
At midnight federal agents prepared a raid on Northbridge.
Daniel insisted on going.
Brooks refused.
Daniel ignored him.
Before they left, Winnie handed her father the small brass key Eleanor had worn around her neck.
"For luck."
Daniel closed his hand around it.
"This does not open Northbridge."
Winnie shrugged.
"It keeps opening things nobody wants opened."
For the first time in days, Daniel smiled.
Then Brooks entered.
"We found something else on Rourke's computer."
He turned the screen.
A security still.
Rebecca.
November 4, 2019.
The night she died.
May you like
She was walking into Northbridge Women's Clinic.
And beside her was Sarah.
