Chapter 9 - St. Agnes

St. Agnes had been a nursing home before the Vale Foundation bought it. Its windows were dark when Adrian and Hannah arrived just after midnight.

“You wait here,” Hannah said.

“That's my wife.”

“And it's my job to keep you alive long enough to see her.”

They entered through a side door Rosa had described. Inside, the air smelled of disinfectant and damp plaster. A television played to an empty room.

At the end of the hall, they found Celia Ward, alive, frightened, and holding a small medical bag.

“I never wanted anyone hurt,” she said.

“Where's Evelyn?” Adrian demanded.

Celia glanced toward a locked elevator. “They moved her this afternoon.”

“Who?”

“Marcus. And someone higher up.”

Hannah showed her badge. “Start talking.”

Celia swallowed. “The clinic falsified patient consent forms for an experimental drug program. Evelyn found the files. She was going to report it.”

Adrian's phone lit up with a message from an unknown number: a photograph of Sophie asleep in her bed, taken minutes earlier.

The old nursing home smelled of bleach and damp plaster. A wheelchair sat abandoned beside a vending machine with its lights still on. Hannah moved first, checking corners, while Adrian followed with his phone light turned low. Behind a locked supply closet they found empty medication boxes bearing the clinic's labels. Several had patient numbers instead of names.

Celia Ward was hiding in a room where the wallpaper peeled away in strips. She raised a metal lamp when they entered. 'Don't come closer,' she warned. Hannah showed her badge and kept her hands visible. 'We know about Elena Delgado,' she said. Celia lowered the lamp as if its weight had suddenly become unbearable.

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Adrian wanted to shout at her for every day Evelyn had been missing. Instead he asked the only question that mattered. 'Where is my wife?' Celia looked toward the window. 'She was here. They moved her when they learned Rosa had the photograph.' Hannah stepped closer. 'Who ordered it?' Celia whispered a name, and Adrian felt the last of his certainty about his family collapse.

Underneath it were four words: COME HOME. COME ALONE.