Chapter 11 - Three Years in the Dark
Rusk ordered his men to separate us.
Maya was dragged toward a storage room. Grace was forced into a chair beside me.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Grace whispered, "Adrian didn't send you here, did he?"
"No."
Her eyes closed.
"Of course he didn't."
"Why?"
"Because he'd never knowingly put you in danger."
I stared at her.
"You know me?"
"Not personally. But Adrian told me about the nurse who entered his car and apologized for almost giving him a heart attack."
Despite everything, I nearly laughed.
"That sounds like me."
Grace's expression softened, but it didn't last.
"Listen carefully. Mercer changed my medical records after the accident. Rusk had discovered that I was collecting evidence about the patient registry. They wanted the documents, not me."
"So they faked your death?"
"They made it believable. I was heavily sedated when they transferred me. A private physician kept me under medication, and I was moved between two properties under false names."
"Why didn't you escape?"
"I tried."
Her voice cracked.
"The first time, they threatened to kill Adrian. The second time, they showed me photographs of people he loved. The third time, I stopped trying because I realized they would hurt innocent people to get me back."
I thought of the unidentified patients in the basement.
The families who had been told their loved ones were dead.
The people whose identities had been erased.
"Why keep you alive?"
"Because I had the original ledger."
Rusk entered before she could explain further.
"Enough reminiscing."
He placed a laptop on the table.
"The registry contains a list of names. Doctors. Officers. Judges. People who have paid generously to make inconvenient problems disappear."
He looked at me.
"Adrian believes he can use that information to destroy me. He's mistaken."
"Then why are you so worried about it?"
His smile grew thin.
"Because the ledger contains more than my name."
He opened a folder on the screen.
I saw the hospital registry.
Thousands of entries.
Beside each name were dates, payments, transfer codes, and signatures.
Near the bottom appeared a line identifying Grace as a living patient under a false name.
Another line carried the name of a woman I recognized.
My mother.
I felt the room tilt.
She had died when I was seventeen, after a sudden medical crisis. At the time, the hospital had told our family that every effort had been made.
Now I saw that her file had been accessed by the same private registry used to conceal Grace.
"No," I whispered.
Rusk watched my face.
"You understand now?"
I shook my head.
"My mother had nothing to do with this."
"Perhaps not. But she treated someone who did."
He leaned closer.
"Your mother was a nurse at St. Catherine's. A good one, from what I hear. She noticed irregularities in the medication records. She reported them."
I couldn't speak.
"Three days later, she died."
"You're lying."
"That is what everyone says when the truth is expensive."
He closed the laptop.
"Bring me the original ledger, Emma. In exchange, I'll let Maya go. I'll even allow Grace to leave the city."
"And Adrian?"
Rusk smiled.
"Adrian is a complicated matter."
He walked away.
Grace gripped my hand.
"Don't believe him. He doesn't make promises. He makes arrangements."
I looked at her.
"Then how do we get out?"
She glanced at the ceiling.
A security camera blinked above the door.
"We don't escape by running," she whispered. "We escape by making sure the whole world sees what happens here."
I understood.
The ledger was the key.
But Adrian had told me the original records had been missing for three years.
Rusk believed he possessed the only copy.
He was wrong.
May you like
Because I had taken a photograph of the very page that terrified him most.
And I had sent it to someone before coming to the warehouse.
