Chapter 8 - The Road Back to Room 614
The court order required Celeste to keep Lily at an approved family residence.
Instead, traffic cameras captured her vehicle entering the underground garage at Reed Memorial Hospital.
Detective Vale requested emergency intervention.
Hospital security denied that Celeste or Lily had arrived.
Hannah knew exactly where they had gone.
Room 614.
Vale ordered her to remain outside while officers entered with a warrant.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
The officers returned and reported that the sixth floor was empty.
The steel door behind the storage shelves had vanished.
A new wall covered the entrance.
“They sealed it,” Naomi said.
She and Hannah watched from a parked car across the street.
“It was prepared in advance.”
“There has to be another way inside,” Hannah replied.
Naomi remembered an old ventilation plan used during the sixth-floor repairs.
A service tunnel connected the abandoned wing to the hospital’s original boiler rooms.
The entrance lay beneath a chapel scheduled for demolition.
Hannah called Vale.
He did not answer.
She called again.
Nothing.
“We cannot wait,” she said.
They entered the chapel through a broken side window.
Behind the altar, Naomi found a locked floor panel.
The brass deposit-box key did not fit, but a maintenance tool opened it.
They descended a ladder into darkness.
The tunnel smelled of rust and standing water.
Pipes crossed overhead. Some were so low that Hannah had to crawl.
After thirty yards, they heard voices through a vent.
Celeste was speaking.
“If you tell the judge your mother frightened you, you can go home.”
“I want my real home,” Lily replied.
“Your father may never wake up.”
“He will.”
“And if he dies, everything he owns becomes part of the Reed trust. Your mother cannot control it unless you remain with her.”
“I don’t care about money.”
Celeste laughed softly.
“Children never do. Adults must care for them.”
Hannah moved toward the sound.
Naomi stopped her.
“If we enter too soon, we lose the confession.”
They used Naomi’s phone to record through the vent.
Kells joined Celeste.
“The police searched the corridor,” he said. “We have less than an hour.”
“Then make the child cooperate.”
“I will not drug her.”
Hannah’s anger surged.
Celeste’s voice became colder.
“You have done worse.”
Kells lowered his voice.
“We should move Michael tonight.”
Hannah nearly cried out.
Michael was in the sixth-floor wing after all.
The empty room had been a decoy.
“Where?” Celeste asked.
“The Northlake facility.”
“He cannot arrive alive.”
Silence followed.
Hannah looked at Naomi.
Kells spoke again.
“The crash failed. I will not risk another failure inside my hospital.”
Now they knew.
Michael’s crash had not been an accident.
Celeste said, “You lost the right to become cautious when you falsified Adrian’s death certificate.”
Naomi’s phone almost slipped from her hand.
Adrian Vale had supposedly died in the sixth-floor fire.
But Celeste had just admitted the death certificate was false.
Footsteps moved away from the vent.
Hannah crawled toward the end of the tunnel.
A grate opened beneath the bed in Room 614.
Lily stood beside it.
Celeste had left temporarily with Kells.
Hannah lifted the grate.
Lily covered her mouth to stop herself from shouting.
“Mommy?”
Hannah pulled her close.
“We have to leave.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
Lily pointed toward the door.
“Grandma said if I leave, Daddy’s machines will stop.”
Hannah realized Celeste had connected Michael’s location to Lily’s obedience.
She could not risk moving until they found him.
Naomi returned to the tunnel to contact Vale and search the adjoining rooms.
Hannah heard footsteps approaching.
There was no time to escape.
She kissed Lily’s forehead and whispered, “I need you to be brave.”
Then she slid beneath the hospital bed.
May you like
The door opened.
Celeste entered alone.
