Chapter 7 - The Woman in the White Badge
Hospital security sealed the pediatric floor before Rowan and Detective Sloan arrived.
No one had entered Elsie’s room.
Nina Keller sat with both children while two officers guarded the corridor.
The photograph had been taken twenty minutes earlier.
Someone had already been inside the hospital.
Security recordings showed a woman wearing a white visitor badge passing the nurses’ station. A surgical mask concealed the lower half of her face. She carried a clipboard and moved with the confidence of someone who knew where every camera was positioned.
At 11:42, she paused outside Elsie’s room and took the photograph.
At 11:43, she entered a stairwell.
She never appeared on another camera.
Detective Sloan examined the visitor badge recovered from a trash bin.
It belonged to an employee who had called in sick that morning.
“Atlas House has access everywhere,” Rowan said.
“Not everywhere,” Sloan replied. “It has people willing to sell access.”
Nina brought Teddy into a private consultation room.
Elsie protested until Rowan promised she could watch through the glass.
The bear had belonged to Mara as a child. One ear had been repaired with slightly different thread, but there was no obvious opening.
A hospital technician scanned it.
A small circular object appeared inside the stuffing near the bear’s chest.
Nina carefully opened the existing repair seam.
She removed a bronze disk smaller than a coin.
One side carried the Hale family crest.
The other showed a lantern surrounded by twelve dots.
“The trust seal,” Rowan said.
Detective Sloan placed it in an evidence container.
“Julian believed Mara hid it here.”
“Then Mara knew someone might search her.”
“Or she wanted them to believe the seal was still missing.”
Inside the bear, Nina found a second object.
A tightly folded strip of paper.
It contained six handwritten numbers and one word.
ORPHEUS.
Rowan recognized the numbers as coordinates.
They pointed to an abandoned greenhouse on the northern edge of an old Hale estate.
The property had belonged to Eleanor.
Gideon sold most of the land after her death, but the greenhouse remained under a private trust.
Detective Sloan ordered a tactical unit to inspect it.
Before the officers left, Micah asked Rowan to come closer.
“Mom said something when she put Teddy in my backpack.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Your father will understand Orpheus.’”
Rowan did not.
He searched his memory.
His mother had played the piano each evening when he was young. One piece had been called Orpheus in the Underworld.
After Eleanor’s death, Gideon had removed the piano from the mansion.
“Where is my mother’s piano?” Rowan asked Gideon by phone.
There was a long pause.
“At the old estate.”
“Near the greenhouse?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the last person who went looking for it disappeared.”
“Who?”
“Mara.”
Rowan gripped the phone.
“When?”
“Six days ago. She asked for the estate keys. I gave them to her.”
“You told me you warned her to leave the past alone.”
“I did.”
“But you helped her.”
“She showed me proof that Atlas House was using your company again.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“She believed your phone was compromised.”
“And you believed her?”
“I remembered what happened to Eleanor.”
Detective Sloan stepped closer, listening.
Rowan asked, “What happened to my mother?”
Gideon’s voice became unsteady.
“She found the seal inside the piano. The next morning, her car went through the river barrier.”
“You said it was an accident.”
“I wanted you to have a childhood.”
“You gave me a lie.”
“I gave you thirty years.”
A hospital alarm sounded briefly in the corridor, then stopped.
An officer entered the room carrying an envelope.
“It was delivered to reception for Mr. Hale.”
Rowan opened it.
Inside was a photograph of Mara standing inside the abandoned greenhouse.
A newspaper lay at her feet.
The date on its front page was that morning.
Mara was alive.
May you like
On the back of the photograph, someone had written:
Bring the seal before sunset, or this becomes the last picture your children have of their mother.
