Chapter 9 - Briar Glen
Brooks ignored me with the patience of someone used to rich men thinking fear made them useful.
"You'll help by staying out of the search team," she said. "If this place has armed guards, I don't need another person to protect."
The clinic looked like a country hotel, all pale stone and tidy hedges. A woman in a blue blazer opened the front door, stared at the warrant, and insisted the basement was used for storage.
Brooks went in with officers. I watched the monitors from a portable command desk. Camera feeds showed empty therapy rooms, empty offices, a corridor lined with portraits of smiling doctors.
Then an officer found a coded door beneath the laundry room.
"We have medical beds," his voice said over the radio. "Three occupied. One woman matches the photograph."
I stopped breathing.
Nora Bennett came out on a stretcher, pale and exhausted but awake. Her hair had been cut unevenly. She turned her head when Brooks spoke my name.
"Daniel Vale?" she whispered.
I stepped closer, and she flinched. I halted immediately.
"Your daughter is safe," I said. "Ellie is with Rosa."
Her face crumpled. "My baby. She made it?"
"She made it. She's braver than both of us."
Nora covered her mouth and cried without sound. When she could finally speak, she grabbed my wrist.
"Blake and Cole didn't just steal from the foundation. They used North Pier to move counterfeit medical equipment into disaster clinics. People got hurt. Aaron found out."
"Did they kill him?"
Her eyes went cold. "They ordered the truck that hit him. Aaron recorded them planning it. I have the file."
"Where?"
"Rosa knows the code. The evidence is hidden somewhere no one would think to steal."
One of the officers came out carrying a slim medical folder. Inside was Nora's intake form, signed by a man using the name Dr. Kent.
May you like
The photograph attached to the file wasn't a doctor.
It was my father.
