Chapter 14 - Beneath St. Jude
The old pathology wing existed beneath three newer hospital additions.
Most staff barely knew it was there.
Concrete corridors.
Abandoned labs.
Storage rooms filled with equipment nobody had bothered to throw away.
Detective Cole assembled a tactical team.
Arthur and Daniel were forbidden to join.
They joined anyway.
Not with weapons.
Not at first.
They followed the officers only as far as the secured stairwell.
I remained upstairs with Hannah and Sophie.
At least that was the agreement.
Then everything went wrong.
At 9:42 p.m., the fire alarm activated on the neonatal floor.
Not smoke.
Not heat.
Manual pull station.
Security responded.
Thirty seconds later, one isolation monitor went blank.
Sophie’s.
I ran inside.
She was there.
Safe.
The monitoring cable had been cut.
A distraction.
“Hannah.”
She looked at me.
“Take Sophie.”
“What?”
“Now.”
I disconnected the portable leads and placed the baby inside a transport incubator.
Denise appeared.
“Where?”
“Secure neonatal procedure room.”
We moved.
Then the elevator doors opened.
Jonathan Pierce stepped out.
He wore scrubs.
As though he belonged.
As though he had never fled.
I froze.
“Hannah,” I whispered.
She turned.
Pierce smiled.
“Everyone seems very dramatic tonight.”
I positioned myself between him and the incubator.
“Security!”
No one answered.
Pierce held up a small device.
“Emergency frequencies are temporarily offline.”
Hannah grabbed the incubator handle.
“Stay away from my baby.”
Pierce looked at her almost sadly.
“You have no idea how many problems your mother caused.”
Hannah’s face hardened.
“You killed her?”
Pierce sighed.
“My father believed problems should be removed. I inherited his mistakes.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
He smiled faintly.
“It isn’t.”
I looked toward the stairwell door.
Locked.
Pierce noticed.
“You won’t reach them.”
“Arthur?”
“Yes.”
Hannah’s face tightened.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
Pierce’s voice remained calm.
“Yet.”
He approached Sophie.
I moved.
He stopped.
“Claire, don’t become foolish now.”
“I apparently worked for a criminal for nine years. I’m feeling flexible.”
His expression cooled.
“You think this is about killing babies?”
“You kidnapped one.”
“Rebecca did.”
“You enabled her.”
“I underestimated her resentment.”
Pierce looked at Sophie.
“I needed Hannah to disappear. Quietly.”
Hannah stared.
“Why?”
“Because the trust cannot verify a descendant who cannot be located.”
“Then why not kill Arthur years ago?”
Pierce smiled.
“Because nobody knew he qualified until Thomas resurfaced.”
Everything returned to Thomas.
“What happened eleven months ago?” I asked.
“Daniel uploaded his DNA.”
Pierce’s eyes narrowed.
“The match alerted a dormant family genealogy file.”
“You were monitoring DNA databases?”
“My company invests in them.”
He looked almost proud.
“We found Daniel. Then Thomas contacted him. Then Arthur.”
Arthur had not submitted DNA.
“How did you get Arthur?”
“Military medical samples were transferred into a veterans’ research project.”
Hannah looked disgusted.
“You used his blood without consent?”
“Consent is often a matter of paperwork.”
That sentence told me more about Jonathan Pierce than any confession could.
He reached for the incubator.
Hannah shoved him.
Pierce stumbled.
Then pulled a gun.
Everything stopped.
“I did not want this.”
Hannah laughed bitterly.
“Criminals say that a lot.”
Pierce aimed.
“Step away.”
I could hear my own heartbeat.
Hannah remained beside Sophie.
“You’ll have to shoot me.”
Pierce’s jaw tightened.
“Hannah.”
“You already took my mother.”
His hand shifted.
“I was twenty-six when Emily died.”
Hannah froze.
“What?”
“My father handled that.”
“Then you knew.”
“Yes.”
“And did nothing.”
“I protected the institution.”
“You mean yourself.”
Pierce looked tired.
“There are fifteen thousand employees connected to this hospital network. Pension funds. Research grants. Clinics. You think exposing fifty years of corruption punishes dead men?”
“It punishes living criminals.”
Pierce smiled sadly.
“That’s a child’s answer.”
Hannah stared at him.
“No.”
She placed one hand over Sophie’s incubator.
“This is a mother’s answer.”
The lights went out.
Pierce spun.
I heard movement.
A body struck the wall.
The gun fired.
Hannah screamed.
Emergency lights came on.
Daniel Cross was on the floor wrestling Pierce.
Arthur stood in the doorway.
His left shoulder bled.
“Dad!”
Hannah ran toward him.
“I’m fine.”
He was not fine.
A bullet had grazed him.
Daniel slammed Pierce’s wrist against the floor.
The gun skidded away.
Arthur kicked it down the hallway.
Police surged through the door seconds later.
Pierce was arrested.
Arthur went straight to Sophie.
Not his wound.
Not the officers.
The baby.
“She okay?”
I nodded.
“She’s okay.”
He closed his eyes.
Only then did he allow me to examine his shoulder.
Downstairs, officers found Thomas Vale.
Alive.
Seventy-eight years old.
Dehydrated.
Bruised.
But alive.
Arthur refused to meet him immediately.
That surprised everyone.
“He waited fifty-two years,” Arthur said.
“He can wait twenty minutes while I sit with my granddaughter.”
So he did.
Sophie slept against his chest.
Hannah sat beside him.
Daniel leaned against the wall with an ice pack over one eye.
For perhaps the strangest half hour in St. Jude history, three generations of a family separated by lies sat together while the oldest generation waited downstairs in police custody.
Eventually, Arthur went.
Thomas lay in a hospital bed.
White hair.
Deep wrinkles.
Same eyes.
Arthur entered alone.
Thomas stared.
The old man began crying before Arthur said a word.
“You look like Evelyn.”
Arthur closed the door.
“You knew where I was.”
Thomas nodded.
“For years.”
“You knew I survived Afghanistan.”
“Yes.”
“You knew about Hannah?”
Thomas closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Arthur stood perfectly still.
“Then give me one reason I shouldn’t walk out.”
Thomas opened his eyes.
“Because if you do, you’ll spend another twenty years imagining an answer worse than the truth.”
Arthur stared.
“Try me.”
Thomas swallowed.
“I stayed away because Harold asked me to.”
Arthur’s anger faltered.
“My father?”
“The man who raised you.”
“What did he know?”
“Everything.”
Arthur stared.
Thomas continued.
“When Evelyn died, Harold made me promise I would never come back into your life.”
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
“Yes.”
“You could have come after.”
“Harold said you were happy.”
Arthur laughed bitterly.
“And after Hannah disappeared?”
Thomas began to cry.
“That was when I broke the promise.”
Arthur went still.
“What?”
“I found her.”
“When?”
“She was eleven.”
Arthur’s face emptied.
“You found my daughter?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t bring her to me?”
“No.”
Arthur backed away.
Thomas closed his eyes.
“She begged me not to.”
Arthur stared.
“She was eleven.”
“She believed Richard would find her again.”
“Then you take both of you and come to me!”
Thomas’s monitor accelerated.
“I was being watched.”
“So was everybody!”
Arthur slammed his hand against the bedrail.
His fingers shook.
“Everybody made choices for me.”
Thomas cried silently.
“My mother.”
“Richard.”
“Emily.”
“You.”
Arthur’s voice broke.
“Every single one of you decided I was too damaged to be trusted with my own life.”
Thomas whispered, “I was wrong.”
Arthur stared.
“Why should that matter now?”
“Because Hannah knows the last secret.”
Arthur’s expression hardened.
“No more secrets.”
Thomas looked toward the door.
“This one is hers.”
“What?”
Thomas whispered,
“Emily didn’t die before telling Hannah who caused the crash.”
Arthur’s blood went cold.
“Hannah was nine.”
“She heard her mother name the person.”
“Gerald Sloan?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Malcolm Pierce?”
Again, no.
Arthur stared.
May you like
Thomas said,
“Emily said Richard was in the car.”
