Chapter 11 - The Empty BuildingDr. Marcus Vale's attorney issued a statement calling every allegation malicious. Meanwhile his offices were cleared overnight. A warrant team found shredded files, disconnected cameras, and a basement room freshly painted beige over blue walls.
Nadia studied the invoices Ben had saved. “There are three properties connected by the same laundry contractor,” she said. “One isn't on the ownership disclosures.”
Daniel recognized the address: an old boarding school near Lake Hudson. Claire had attended a fundraiser there two years earlier.
Emma remembered a detail from Saint Agnes. “They used blue laundry carts for patients being transferred between wings. The carts had tracking labels. If the same contractor serviced the school...”
Owen located a shipping manifest. Deliveries continued long after the school supposedly closed.
Leo overheard the grown-ups talking and tugged at Emma's sleeve. “Mommy took the yellow bus.”
Daniel crouched. “What yellow bus, buddy?”
“Blue door. Then yellow bus. I waved.”
Back at home, Daniel moved Leo's drawings from a drawer to the refrigerator door. A housekeeper offered to frame them; he declined. He wanted his son to see that his pictures belonged where ordinary families put pictures, held up by crooked magnets and admired at breakfast.
He demonstrated a tiny wave that broke Daniel's heart.
The memory had been trapped under months of fear, and Daniel refused to push for more. Emma distracted Leo with the stuffed rabbit while Nadia wrote down his exact words to pass to a child specialist.
That evening a teacher at the boarding school agreed to speak by video call. Her face was shadowed. “I saw a woman at an upstairs window,” she said. “She kept holding up a piece of paper, but I couldn't read it.”
“What happened to her?” Daniel asked.
“They moved her yesterday.”
“Where?”
The teacher glanced toward her door. “There's a place called The Lantern. It used to be a motel. And—”
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The call ended in the middle of a scream.
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