Chapter 5 - The Man in the Photograph
Khloe examined the photograph beneath the brightest lamp in the room.
Dr. Shaw sat on the left.
Her wrists were bound to a metal chair.
Jonah sat beside her with blood on his collar.
Owen lay behind them, his face partly hidden.
A fourth person appeared at the edge of the image.
Only one shoulder and one hand were visible.
The hand wore a heavy gold ring engraved with a black stone.
Khloe had seen that ring before.
It had belonged to Charles Vale.
The man who had raised her.
The man whose funeral she had attended nineteen years earlier.
“That ring was buried with my father.”
Sebastian stood beside her.
“Could it be a copy?”
“My mother designed it.”
Khloe traced the dark stone in the photograph.
“There was only one.”
The ring had been made from melted gold taken from Khloe’s grandfather’s watch.
The black stone came from a beach where Charles and Eleanor had spent their honeymoon.
No jeweler could have duplicated the private engraving inside the band.
Khloe remembered the coffin.
Charles’s hands had been folded over his chest.
The ring had been visible.
Unless the man in the coffin had not been Charles.
Sebastian called Mara.
She had refused transport to another hospital and was working from a secured treatment room on the same floor.
Mara arrived with her fractured wrist in a brace.
She studied the photograph.
“The image metadata has been stripped.”
“Can you identify the location?”
“Possibly.”
Mara enlarged the background.
A faded blue stripe ran along the concrete wall.
Behind Dr. Shaw stood a medical gas connection.
“This is a decommissioned treatment area.”
“At St. Aurelia?”
“Most likely.”
Mara pointed to the clock.
“That model was installed during the hospital expansion twenty years ago.”
“Sublevel C,” Khloe said.
Dr. Shaw’s note had mentioned her mother’s file there.
Sebastian shook his head.
“Sublevel C was sealed after a chemical leak.”
“That is the official explanation.”
Mara checked the corridor.
“There are older service routes beneath the hospital.”
“The kidnappers could be below us?”
“They may never have left the building.”
Sebastian reached for the door.
Mara blocked him.
“Running downstairs without a plan will get them killed.”
“We have less than three days.”
“We may have less than three minutes if Miles sees us approaching.”
Khloe looked at the photograph again.
Miles wanted her frightened.
He also wanted her curious.
The ring had been deliberately placed inside the frame.
“He wants me to go downstairs.”
Mara nodded.
“It may be a trap.”
“It is definitely a trap.”
Khloe touched the bracelet containing the original footage.
“But he also wants something only I can open.”
“The biometric vault.”
Sebastian turned toward her.
“You are not going near it.”
“It responds to me.”
“We will find another way.”
“There may not be another way.”
Mara examined Dr. Shaw’s note.
“Your mother’s file could explain why your unborn daughter was genetically tested.”
Khloe’s stomach tightened.
“Someone took a sample from me before I became pregnant.”
“Or from an embryo.”
“There was no embryo.”
Sebastian’s expression darkened.
“There was a procedure.”
Khloe looked at him.
“What procedure?”
“Six months before you became pregnant, you collapsed at the winter benefit.”
“I was treated for dehydration.”
“That is what Dr. Shaw told us.”
“You think she performed something else?”
“I signed several consent forms while you were unconscious.”
Khloe stared at him.
“You signed medical consent without reading it?”
“I was told you needed an emergency diagnostic procedure.”
“What kind?”
“A uterine biopsy.”
Khloe felt violated in a way she could not immediately name.
“No one told me.”
“You were in pain.”
“I would remember a biopsy.”
“Dr. Shaw said the sedation caused temporary confusion.”
Khloe looked at the note again.
Dr. Shaw had known something was wrong.
Perhaps she had participated before trying to protect Khloe.
“What did the procedure actually collect?”
Mara answered.
“Potentially eggs, tissue, or a complete genetic profile.”
Sebastian looked sick.
“I let them do it.”
“You believed a doctor.”
“I believed my family’s hospital.”
Khloe almost reminded him that his family did not own it.
Instead, she looked toward the fetal monitor.
Her daughter’s heartbeat remained steady.
Someone had planned for the pregnancy before it existed.
Someone had known the trust’s condition.
Someone had needed a biological child from Khloe.
“Why help me become pregnant if they wanted the baby dead?”
Mara understood first.
“Because the trust would not open otherwise.”
Khloe nodded.
“They needed the pregnancy to activate the transfer.”
Sebastian’s face became colder.
“Then they needed Khloe to renounce it before thirty weeks.”
“Or die with the baby,” Mara said.
A nurse entered with a secure tablet.
“Mrs. Thorne, there is an attorney downstairs requesting emergency access.”
“Owen is missing.”
“He says his name is Gabriel Vale.”
Khloe looked at the screen.
The lobby camera showed a tall man in a charcoal suit.
He appeared to be in his early forties.
His hair was dark, with gray beginning at the temples.
He held a leather document case.
The resemblance to Khloe’s mother was unmistakable.
“Who is he?” Sebastian asked.
“I have never seen him.”
Mara enlarged his credentials.
“They are legitimate.”
The man’s bar registration listed an office in Washington, D.C.
His emergency contact was Eleanor Vale.
Khloe’s dead mother.
“Bring him up,” Khloe said.
Mara hesitated.
“He could be part of this.”
“So could everyone else.”
Gabriel entered ten minutes later under armed escort.
He stopped when he saw Khloe.
Emotion tightened his face.
“You look like her.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Gabriel Vale.”
“I heard that part.”
He placed the document case on the table.
“Eleanor was my sister.”
Khloe stared at him.
“My mother was an only child.”
“That was the story she told after she went into hiding.”
“She never hid.”
“She hid in public.”
Gabriel looked toward Sebastian.
“Before I explain anything, I need to know whether he stays.”
Khloe did not hesitate.
“He stays.”
Sebastian looked surprised.
Trust was gone between them, but the conspiracy belonged to both families.
Gabriel opened the case.
Inside were sealed legal documents, photographs, and a small black device.
“Eleanor created the medical network with three partners.”
He placed three photographs on the table.
The first showed Eleanor in her twenties.
The second showed Alexander Thorne.
The third showed a younger Charles Vale.
“They built the first encrypted patient-data system from a laboratory beneath this hospital.”
“Sublevel C,” Khloe said.
“Yes.”
“Why was it sealed?”
“Because Alexander attempted to murder the other two partners.”
Sebastian’s face hardened.
Gabriel continued.
“Charles survived.”
Khloe looked at the photograph from the kidnappers.
“My father is alive.”
Gabriel glanced at the gold ring.
“Possibly.”
“You do not know?”
“I have not seen Charles in nineteen years.”
“Why did I bury him?”
“Because the man in the coffin was his brother.”
Khloe’s throat closed.
Charles had a twin.
No one had ever told her.
“Why would his brother pretend to be him?”
“To protect you.”
“From Alexander?”
“And from the Rossi family.”
Isabella’s surname took on new meaning.
Gabriel removed another photograph.
It showed Isabella’s father, Matteo Rossi, standing beside Alexander Thorne outside the hospital.
“Matteo financed the original laboratory.”
“What did he receive?”
“Access.”
“To patient records?”
“To genetics.”
Mara leaned closer.
Gabriel nodded.
“The system was designed to protect medical information.”
“Alexander and Matteo discovered it could also identify bloodlines, inheritance claims, and biological relationships across millions of records.”
Sebastian looked at Khloe.
“They used hospital patients as a private genealogy database.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel activated the black device.
A map of the hospital appeared.
A pulsing signal flashed beneath Sublevel C.
“What is that?”
“Owen’s emergency tracker.”
Khloe stood too quickly.
Pain tightened around her stomach.
Sebastian caught her elbow.
She let him hold her for one second before pulling away.
“The tracker is moving,” Mara said.
The signal traveled beneath the hospital.
Gabriel enlarged the map.
“It is approaching an elevator.”
“Which elevator?”
“The executive maternity shaft.”
Everyone looked toward the wall behind Khloe’s bed.
A mechanical sound rumbled inside it.
The private elevator had supposedly been disabled.
The doors at the end of the suite began opening.
Sebastian moved in front of Khloe.
Mara raised her weapon.
The elevator was empty.
A wheelchair rolled out by itself.
Owen Mercer sat in it.
His shirt was soaked with blood.
A wire had been wrapped around his chest.
A digital timer counted downward from sixty seconds.
Khloe called his name.
Owen lifted his head.
“Do not come closer.”
His voice was barely audible.
“The chair is attached to the baby monitor.”
Khloe looked at the fetal monitor beside her bed.
May you like
The screen displayed a new message.
CHOOSE WHICH HEART STOPS FIRST.
