Agent Bell had the hospital lock down Sophie’s floor before I finished reading the message a second time.
Eric kept repeating that he hadn’t known.
Daniel stopped listening.
“What does ‘experimental vector administered’ mean?”
Dr. Shah read the photograph of the form.
“I can’t authenticate this from an image.”
“If it’s real?”
She looked at Sophie.
“A vector can be used to deliver genetic material into cells.”
My stomach turned.
“She was six weeks old.”
“I understand.”
“No. Somebody experimented on my six-week-old baby.”
Eric sat against the wall.
“My father was there that night.”
I turned.
“What?”
“I didn’t know until afterward.”
“After what?”
“I saw him outside the hospital.”
“You told me you hadn’t seen him for fourteen years.”
“I hadn’t spoken to him.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
Daniel stepped between us.
“Tell everything now.”
Eric looked at Sophie.
She was awake.
“No secrets,” she said.
He swallowed.
“When you were a baby, Grandpa Samuel came to the hospital.”
Sophie frowned.
“The dead grandpa?”
Eric closed his eyes.
“He isn’t dead.”
She stared at him.
“You lied?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted him gone.”
“That’s not the same as dead.”
“No.”
Agent Bell received a radio call.
Then another.
His expression sharpened.
“What?”
He tried the radio again.
Nothing.
The lights flickered.
Emergency alarms sounded.
Red backup lights came on.
The electronic lock on Sophie’s door engaged.
Daniel moved immediately beside the bed.
A figure appeared at the far end of the corridor.
Older man.
Gray hair.
Dark coat.
Silver medical case.
Eric stopped breathing.
“Dad.”
Samuel Hale approached slowly.
He stopped on the opposite side of the locked glass door.
For fourteen years Eric had treated him like a ghost.
Now the ghost was looking directly at Sophie.
Samuel tilted his head.
“You’ve gotten old,” he told Eric through the glass.
Eric stepped backward.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Samuel looked at Sophie.
“Neither should she.”
I tightened my grip on her hand.
“What does that mean?”
Samuel looked at me.
“More than you’ve been told, Claire.”
Daniel moved between him and Sophie.
“You know her name.”
“I knew Sophie before you did.”
Daniel lunged toward the door.
Agent Bell stopped him.
The lock held.
Eric stared at the silver case.
“What’s in there?”
Samuel ignored him.
“What did you do to Sophie?” Eric demanded.
Samuel’s expression barely changed.
“I tried to save her.”
“You injected her.”
“Yes.”
The lack of denial stunned me.
Daniel stared through the glass.
“You admit experimenting on an infant?”
Samuel looked almost offended by the wording.
“I intervened.”
“You had no consent.”
“I had a child with a dangerous inherited cellular instability.”
“You had a baby,” I said. “My baby.”
Samuel looked at me.
“Your family carries a mutation I had encountered only rarely.”
“What mutation?”
“One associated with germ-cell instability.”
My mother.
Her ovarian cancer.
Sophie’s tumors.
I felt the pieces moving.
“You knew about my family.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Samuel didn’t answer.
Eric stepped closer to the glass.
“You used me.”
Samuel looked at him.
“NorthStar hired you because I arranged it.”
Eric’s face emptied.
“No.”
“You thought your career happened accidentally?”
“I applied.”
“And I ensured you were selected.”
“You monitored Sophie through me.”
Samuel’s eyes moved toward his granddaughter.
“I monitored the therapy.”
“She is a person.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Sophie sat up.
“I’m right here.”
Everyone stopped.
She looked through the glass.
“Are you Grandpa Samuel?”
“Yes.”
“Eric told me you were dead.”
Samuel glanced at his son.
“He found that simpler.”
Sophie frowned.
“Are you a bad person?”
Nobody moved.
Samuel considered the question.
“Some people believe so.”
“That sounds like yes.”
For a fraction of a second, Samuel smiled.
Then he raised the silver case.
“I came because Sophie’s treatment must be changed.”
Dr. Shah wasn’t in the room.
I stepped toward the glass.
“You’re not treating her.”
“Her chemotherapy could interact with the vector I administered.”
“What does that mean?”
“The therapy I gave her as an infant altered a cellular pathway. Certain chemotherapy drugs may destabilize it.”
Daniel looked at the case.
“And conveniently you brought the solution.”
“A reversal vector.”
“You expect us to let you inject her again?”
“If you don’t understand what was done ten years ago, you may kill her while trying to save her.”
Sophie looked at me.
“Mom?”
“He doesn’t get to decide.”
Samuel’s eyes remained on me.
“You need to understand why I chose Sophie.”
“Chose?”
My voice cracked.
“She was six weeks old.”
“Her genetic profile was unusually valuable.”
I hit the glass with my palm.
“She was not valuable data.”
Samuel barely reacted.
“Your mother had the same profile.”
Everything stopped.
“Laura?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know my mother?”
Samuel’s face changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“You knew her.”
“Yes.”
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
“I know.”
“She had ovarian cancer.”
“I know.”
Eric stared at his father.
“You knew Claire’s mother?”
Samuel exhaled.
“I consulted on Laura Bennett’s case.”
My stomach twisted.
“You were a pediatric oncologist.”
“The research crossed specialties.”
“What research?”
Samuel remained silent.
Daniel understood first.
“You experimented on Laura too.”
Samuel looked at him.
“Laura volunteered.”
I stepped closer.
“My mother was diagnosed at thirty-six.”
“The study began years earlier.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“We identified her risk before she developed cancer.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“You knew she might become sick?”
“Yes.”
“Did you warn her?”
“She understood the risk.”
“Did you treat her?”
“Eventually.”
Eventually.
The word struck harder than shouting would have.
“You watched.”
Samuel’s jaw tightened.
“We needed to understand progression.”
I remembered the note in Sophie’s Facility 17 file.
Observation only.
Do not refer.
“You watched my mother develop cancer.”
“She was part of a study.”
“She was a human being.”
“Yes.”
“She died.”
Samuel looked away.
“The therapy failed.”
My hands were shaking.
“And then you used an improved version on Sophie.”
“Yes.”
Eric looked sick.
“You used my daughter to continue your experiment.”
“I tried to correct an earlier failure.”
I slammed my palm against the glass again.
“Sophie is not your correction.”
She began crying.
Every adult stopped.
She wiped her face angrily.
“Stop talking like I’m furniture.”
I sat beside her.
“You’re right.”
She looked at Samuel.
“Did you hurt Grandma Laura?”
Samuel answered before I could stop him.
“Yes.”
“Did you make her die?”
For the first time his certainty disappeared.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie stared at him.
“That’s a terrible answer.”
Samuel nodded.
“Yes.”
The lights flickered again.
Agent Bell looked toward the corridor.
Samuel glanced behind him.
It was the first time he appeared nervous.
Agent Bell noticed.
“Who else is here?”
Samuel looked at him.
“You still think I’m the person you should fear most.”
Then he turned away.
Eric hit the glass.
“Dad!”
The electronic lock released.
Agent Bell pulled the door open and ran.
Daniel started after him.
I caught his arm.
“Sophie.”
He stopped immediately.
Eric ran instead.
Security flooded the corridor after normal power returned.
Samuel had disappeared through a service stairwell.
The silver case remained outside Sophie’s room.
Bomb technicians cleared it before anyone opened it.
Inside were six vials, a syringe, a flash drive and a handwritten note.
Agent Bell showed us a photograph.
ASK LENA WHAT HAPPENED TO LAURA.
Daniel frowned.
“Dr. Ortiz.”
Hospital staff tried to locate her.
She had disappeared during the power failure.
At 8:12 that evening Dr. Shah came in.
Her team had begun reviewing the information recovered from Samuel’s files.
“There may be some scientific basis for his warning.”
My stomach tightened.
“You’re stopping chemotherapy?”
“Temporarily pausing one medication while we evaluate possible interactions.”
“For how long?”
“Approximately forty-eight hours.”
Sophie sighed.
“So Kevin gets a vacation.”
“A short one.”
“Still rude.”
Most of the purple streak Daniel had dyed into her hair was already coming out with the hair itself.
I touched the remaining strands.
Dr. Shah explained that Samuel’s vials were being analyzed independently.
“You’re considering using them?”
“Not unless we know exactly what they contain and there is compelling medical justification.”
“And if we refuse?”
“We find another treatment strategy.”
Sophie looked at me.
“Do whatever keeps me alive.”
My throat closed.
“You shouldn’t have to think like that.”
“But I do.”
She looked from me to Daniel.
“You keep saying I’m a kid. Kevin doesn’t care how old I am.”
Nobody had an answer.
“No more whispering,” she said.
I hooked my pinky around hers.
“No more whispering.”
That night I found Eric alone in the family lounge.
He told me he remembered Samuel talking about a woman named Laura when Eric was a child.
Samuel had called her his most important case.
Eric had overheard an argument between Samuel and an unidentified woman.
The woman accused Samuel of breaking a promise to Laura.
Samuel answered that Laura had made her own choice.
“What choice?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared through the lounge window.
Then Eric admitted something else.
He had seen Samuel at our wedding.
An older man across the street.
I remembered him.
I had asked Eric who he was.
Eric claimed he didn’t know.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“You let me marry you while your father watched from across the street.”
“I wanted him out of my life.”
“He was already inside mine.”
Eric covered his face.
I told him to stop apologizing and start telling the truth.
So he did.
At nineteen, he had found research files in Samuel’s basement.
He reported them.
The records vanished.
The investigation went nowhere.
Samuel sent Eric out of state afterward.
Eric had spent his adult life pretending his father no longer existed.
“Maybe that’s why I attacked Daniel,” he said.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Daniel stays.”
Eric looked toward Sophie’s room.
“He’s everything I keep telling myself I would have been if circumstances were different.”
“That doesn’t excuse what you did.”
“I know.”
“He didn’t abandon Sophie.”
“I know.”
“You did sometimes.”
“I know.”
His eyes filled.
“For thirty seconds in that hallway, fear gave me permission to behave exactly like my father.”
Control first.
Evidence later.
Damage acceptable if the person in control believed the goal justified it.
“Then spend the rest of your life choosing differently,” I said.
When I returned to Sophie’s room, Daniel was asleep beside her.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH ABOUT LAURA, COME ALONE.
Then came a photograph.
My mother was young.
Alive.
Sitting beside Samuel Hale in a laboratory.
Behind them stood a woman in a white coat.
Dr. Lena Ortiz.
Except the photograph was more than twenty years old.
And the woman looked exactly the same age as the doctor who had treated Sophie.
Another message arrived.
ST. AGNES PARKING GARAGE. LEVEL 4. 2:00 A.M. NO POLICE.
The time was 1:37.
I should have called Agent Bell.
Instead, I stared at my mother.
Daniel woke.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me.
“You’re terrible at lying.”
I remembered my promise to Sophie.
No secrets.
I handed him the phone.
“You’re not going alone.”
“She specifically said alone.”
“I specifically don’t care.”
“Sophie needs you.”
“Then Eric stays.”
Ten minutes later Eric was beside Sophie while Daniel and I took the service elevator downstairs.
At 1:58 we entered the parking garage.
Daniel waited behind a concrete support column.
I walked forward.
“Dr. Ortiz?”
Footsteps came from the stairwell.
She appeared wearing jeans and a dark sweater.
“You came.”
I held up the photograph.
“How are you in this picture?”
She looked at it.
“That isn’t me.”
“What?”
“That’s my mother.”
The resemblance was extraordinary.
“Her name?”
“Elena Ortiz.”
“Your name is Elena too?”
“Yes. Samuel called both of us Lena.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died.”
“Because of Samuel?”
Dr. Ortiz looked at me.
“Yes.”
I forced myself to ask the only question that mattered.
“What happened to my mother?”
“Laura Bennett wasn’t only Samuel’s patient.”
“What was she?”
“A researcher.”
I laughed because the alternative was believing her.
“My mother taught preschool.”
“Later.”
“She never told me she was a scientist.”
“She had a degree in molecular biology.”
“No.”
“She joined Samuel’s research group in her twenties.”
“Then how did she become his experiment?”
Dr. Ortiz’s eyes filled.
“She discovered she carried the marker they were studying.”
“And volunteered?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she was pregnant.”
My entire body froze.
“With me?”
“No.”
The garage seemed to tilt.
“What happened to the baby?”
“Laura believed she miscarried.”
“Believed?”
Dr. Ortiz hesitated.
“At the time, yes.”
She explained that Samuel had persuaded Laura the unborn child might carry the same dangerous marker.
Laura accepted an experimental therapy.
The pregnancy ended.
Later she discovered Samuel had understated the fetal risk and altered consent documentation.
My mother left the research group.
Dr. Ortiz’s mother helped her copy evidence.
Years later Laura became pregnant again.
With me.
“She disappeared from Samuel’s reach,” Dr. Ortiz said. “Changed doctors. Changed addresses. Used another surname.”
Then I married Samuel’s son.
Nobody had planned it.
Samuel recognized me at the wedding.
After that he began watching again.
“When Sophie was born, he saw another opportunity.”
“To finish his experiment.”
“Yes.”
Daniel stepped from behind the column.
Dr. Ortiz recoiled.
“I told you to come alone.”
“He’s my husband.”
“I shouldn’t have come.”
I grabbed her arm.
“You know something that could save Sophie.”
She looked toward the elevator.
“Samuel’s reversal vector could help.”
“Could?”
“It could also accelerate the tumor under the wrong conditions.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“Then nobody uses it.”
“There may be another therapy.”
“Where?”
“My mother preserved a copy of the research.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared at her.
“Then what do you know?”
“Laura knew where it was hidden.”
“My mother is dead.”
“My mother left one phrase.”
“What phrase?”
“Bluebird before sunrise.”
Something moved at the edge of memory.
A blue ceramic bird had sat on my mother’s dresser throughout my childhood.
After she died, I packed it into a box in my stepfather’s attic.
“I have a bluebird.”
Dr. Ortiz’s eyes widened.
“Get it.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Samuel is desperate.”
“For Sophie?”
“For himself.”
Samuel Hale had pancreatic cancer.
Months, perhaps less.
He needed Sophie’s long-term response data.
Her blood.
The vector inside her cells.
He wanted to correct what he had done not only to save her but to prove his life’s work had succeeded.
Before I could respond, an engine roared from the lower ramp.
Headlights swung toward us.
A black SUV accelerated.
Daniel grabbed me.
We jumped behind a concrete pillar.
The vehicle clipped a parked car.
Dr. Ortiz ran toward the stairwell.
A large man appeared beside a van and grabbed her.
He pulled a gun.
Daniel stopped.
The man demanded Samuel’s flash drive.
“I don’t have it.”
He pressed the weapon against Dr. Ortiz.
Then another SUV door opened.
A gray-haired woman stepped out.
Eric’s voice came from behind us.
“Mom?”
I turned.
Eric stood near the elevator.
He had followed us.
The woman looked at him.
“Hello, Eric.”
His mother was supposed to be dead.
Margaret Hale.
Eric stared as if the concrete floor had disappeared beneath him.
“You let me bury you.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Samuel needed to believe I was gone.”
She ordered the gunman to release Dr. Ortiz.
Then she looked at me.
“I knew Laura.”
“How?”
“She was my closest friend.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“And she made me promise that if Samuel ever found you, I would protect you.”
Eric looked devastated.
“You abandoned me for Claire?”
Margaret shook her head.
“No.”
“Then why disappear?”
“Because Samuel wasn’t hunting you.”
“Who was he hunting?”
Margaret looked directly at me.
“Laura’s first child.”
I stopped breathing.
“The baby died.”
“No.”
Dr. Ortiz whispered Margaret’s name in warning.
Margaret continued.
“Samuel told Laura the child died.”
“What actually happened?”
“He took the baby.”
My knees weakened.
Daniel caught my arm.
“What did Samuel do with the child?”
Margaret looked toward the hospital.
“He raised him inside the research program.”
“Where is he now?”
Her answer came quietly.
“Dr. Nathan Vale.”
The fake pediatrician.
The man who had examined Sophie.
The man who had discovered her elevated hCG six months earlier.
The man who had written observation only and deliberately refused to refer her for treatment.
Nathan Vale was my mother’s first child.
My half-brother.
“Why would he do that to Sophie?”
Margaret’s expression hardened.
“Because Nathan no longer works for Samuel.”
“Then who does he work for?”
“Himself.”
“What does he want?”
“To destroy Samuel’s research.”
“By letting Sophie die?”
Margaret looked at me.
“Nathan believes Sophie’s survival would prove Samuel’s treatment worked.”
Daniel’s grip tightened around my arm.
“He sacrificed a ten-year-old child to settle a score.”
“In Nathan’s mind, it isn’t merely revenge.”
“What could possibly make it better?”
“Samuel took his identity, his childhood, his career and most of his life. Nathan believes every successful outcome gives Samuel another excuse for what he did.”
I could barely speak.
“So he wants Sophie to fail.”
Margaret looked at me.
“Yes.”
Behind us, the hospital windows glowed against the night.
My daughter was sleeping somewhere on the sixth floor while two men connected to her by blood were moving toward opposite ends of the same terrible experiment.
Samuel Hale was trying to keep Sophie alive because her survival could vindicate him.
Nathan Vale wanted the experiment to die with her.
And I finally understood that finding the truth about my mother would not be enough.
Before either man reached Sophie again, we had to find the bluebird.
Click here to continue reading: PART 5: The Bluebird Held More Than Hidden Research, and One Recording Forced Claire to Question Everything Her Mother Had Ever Told Her
A Routine Visit Turned Into an Accusation When My Ten-Year-Old Daughter’s Blood Test Showed Something No One Could Explain
Part 4 of 23
