Chapter 2 - THE MAN MY FATHER KNEW
My father had been dead for seven years.
At least that was the sentence I had repeated whenever anyone asked.
Michael Carter died in a car accident when I was eighteen.
Rain.
A mountain road.
Brake failure.
No witnesses.
Case closed.
Yet Luka spoke about him as if my father had been standing in this hospital yesterday.
“You knew him?”
Luka reached slowly into the inside pocket of his coat.
This time he pulled out an old photograph.
He handed it to me.
My knees nearly gave out.
My father stood in the picture.
He looked younger.
Maybe forty.
Beside him stood Luka.
No tattoos covered Luka’s face then, but I recognized the eyes immediately.
The photograph had been taken outside Saint Vincent Hospital.
On the back, my father had written four words.
KEEP M-17 OUTSIDE SYSTEM.
Below that was a date.
Nine years earlier.
“You met him before he died.”
“Many times.”
“Why?”
Luka looked toward Pike.
“Not here.”
Pike took a step forward.
“That photograph proves nothing.”
“You seem very interested in something that supposedly doesn’t exist.”
The nurse abruptly closed my medical folder.
“My patient needs privacy.”
Pike glared at her.
“Nurse Collins.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Take Mrs. Bennett to Room 412.”
The nurse looked at me.
Then at Luka.
Her eyes held a warning.
“Room 412 is being renovated.”
Pike froze.
Only for a second.
But I noticed.
The nurse continued.
“Mrs. Bennett will remain in 427.”
Pike’s mouth tightened.
“Fine.”
He walked away without another word.
The security officers followed him.
Luka watched until the elevator doors closed.
Then he turned to the nurse.
“Thank you.”
She looked terrified.
“Don’t thank me.”
She lowered her voice.
“They reopened 412 this morning.”
Luka’s expression sharpened.
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked at me.
“But Mrs. Bennett’s name was already written on the transfer board when I started my shift.”
Cold spread through me.
“That was before I gave birth.”
The nurse nodded.
Luka’s jaw tightened.
Someone had planned to move me before my daughter was even born.
We returned to my room.
The moment the door closed, Luka pulled the visitor chair beside the bed but remained standing.
I refused to sit.
“What did my father have to do with you?”
“He saved my life.”
I stared at him.
“How?”
“Nine years ago, I was brought here after an attack.”
Luka touched the scar disappearing beneath his collar.
“I needed surgery.”
“I also needed blood.”
“My medical records were complicated.”
“Your father was overseeing compliance for the hospital laboratory.”
I remembered that much.
Dad had spent most of my childhood buried beneath paperwork.
I had never understood what he actually investigated.
Luka continued.
“Your father discovered samples were being moved between departments without authorization.”
“What kind of samples?”
Luka looked at my daughter.
“Reproductive material.”
My skin went cold.
“No.”
“He found seventeen cases.”
I knew the answer before asking.
“M-17.”
Luka nodded.
“I was number seventeen.”
My daughter moved against me.
I looked down at her tiny face.
Then back at him.
“What does that have to do with my baby?”
Luka hesitated.
For the first time since he appeared, the tattooed stranger looked afraid to answer me.
“Before your father died, he made me promise something.”
“What?”
“If you ever came into this hospital pregnant, I was supposed to find you before they found the file.”
My throat tightened.
“Why would he say that?”
Luka reached into his pocket again.
May you like
This time, he placed a small brass key on the table.
“Because your father knew somebody might eventually use M-17 again.”
