Chapter 8 - The Shot I Had Buried
“No.”
My voice echoed beneath the chapel ceiling.
Adrian watched me calmly.
“You chose once before.”
“I was drugged.”
“You were frightened. Fear reveals character.”
Mara moved between me and the altar.
“This ends now.”
She fired at the man holding the detonator.
Her bullet struck his shoulder.
The detonator fell.
Eli lunged toward it.
The second gunman fired.
Jax pulled Eli behind a stone column.
Celeste dropped beneath a pew.
Harold ran toward Adrian’s wheelchair.
Grady seized the ledger.
Chaos erupted.
I crawled behind the altar as bullets struck wood and stone.
Mara tackled the wounded man.
Jax exchanged fire with the second.
Eli reached the detonator first.
Adrian rolled his wheelchair backward toward the side door.
Celeste blocked him.
“You knew?”
“Move.”
“You knew one of us was your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
Adrian slapped her across the face.
Celeste did not move.
She stared at him with thirty-two years of loyalty dying in her eyes.
“You raised me to believe I was chosen.”
“You were useful.”
She stepped aside.
Then drove a metal candle stand into the wheelchair wheel.
Adrian toppled to the floor.
The detonator sounded in Eli’s hand.
A red timer appeared.
02:00.
“Bomb!” he shouted.
Jax subdued the remaining gunman.
Mara searched him for a secondary device.
Adrian laughed from the floor.
“You cannot stop it.”
“Where is the explosive?” Eli demanded.
“Beneath Rosa.”
The chapel floor.
We had less than two minutes.
Jax ordered everyone outside.
I knelt beside Adrian.
“Where is my mother?”
“Basement operating room.”
“You said she was at the clinic.”
“Old footage.”
My heart dropped.
He had anticipated everything.
Eli grabbed my arm.
“We have to go.”
“I am not leaving her.”
“Nora—”
“She is your grandmother.”
His face tightened.
Then he nodded.
“Mara, get everyone out. Jax, find the device.”
“I’m coming with you,” Mara said.
Eli shook his head.
“Someone needs to keep Adrian alive.”
Celeste stepped forward.
“I know the basement.”
Harold stared at her.
“You cannot trust them.”
She looked at him.
“I trusted you for thirty-two years.”
Then she followed us through the side door.
We raced down a corridor lined with rusted hospital beds.
The walls peeled in long gray strips.
Celeste led us to a service staircase.
“What did Adrian mean when he said you were useful?” I asked.
“I ran the charity. I moved money without asking where it came from.”
“Did you know children were stolen?”
“Not until six months ago.”
“What happened then?”
“I found my adoption file.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
She gave me a bitter look.
“Because Harold showed me a photograph of you holding a gun beside Margaret Pike’s body. He said exposing Adrian would send my biological mother to prison.”
“You thought I was your mother.”
“I wanted to believe it.”
The basement smelled of mold and chemicals.
We found my mother strapped to an operating table beneath a surgical lamp.
A man stood over her with a syringe.
Thomas Grady.
Eli charged him.
Grady stepped back.
“Stop. This is medicine.”
“What medicine?”
“Epinephrine. Her heart is failing.”
I reached my mother.
Her skin felt cold.
“Mom?”
Her eyes opened.
“Nora.”
Grady injected the medication.
The monitor beside her accelerated.
“I did not kidnap her from the clinic,” he said. “Adrian’s people did. I followed them.”
“Why should we believe you?” Eli asked.
“Because I sent the blue feather. I wanted you to find the room before Harold destroyed it.”
“You shot at us.”
“I aimed at the booth to frighten you away.”
“You nearly killed me.”
“I am not a good man. I never claimed to be.”
The building shook.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
The timer had less than a minute.
We released my mother from the straps.
Grady lifted her.
“I know another exit.”
He led us through a maintenance tunnel.
Behind us, the explosion struck.
The floor jumped.
A wave of dust and heat tore through the corridor.
Eli threw himself over me.
The tunnel ceiling cracked.
Grady carried my mother through falling debris.
Celeste disappeared behind a wall of dust.
“Celeste!” I screamed.
No answer.
Eli pulled me toward the exit.
“We cannot stay.”
We emerged in the hospital laundry building as the chapel’s east wall collapsed.
Iron Saints rushed toward us.
Jax and Mara had escaped with Adrian, Harold, and the ledger.
But Celeste was missing.
Firefighters entered the tunnel.
They found her twenty minutes later beneath a broken beam.
She was alive, but badly injured.
At the emergency command post, Mara placed Adrian in restraints.
He appeared almost amused.
“You destroyed Rosa’s grave,” she said.
“No. The explosion opened it.”
Beneath the collapsed chapel floor, investigators had discovered two sets of human remains.
One belonged to Rosa Alvarez.
The other likely belonged to Margaret Pike.
Proof of both murders had survived.
My mother lay on a stretcher beneath a blanket.
I sat beside her.
“Did I kill Margaret?”
She closed her eyes.
“You fired the gun.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“The bullet missed.”
I stared at her.
“Then who killed her?”
“Adrian.”
“But the recording—”
“He changed it. Margaret tried to stop him from selling your babies. You grabbed her gun. Adrian knocked your arm aside, then fired his own weapon. You believed the shot came from yours.”
“Why let me believe I killed her?”
“Because fear kept you silent.”
“Why didn’t you tell me later?”
“I was ashamed.”
“Of what?”
She began to cry.
“I helped build the network before I tried to destroy it.”
The admission struck me like a blow.
“How many children?”
“I falsified forty-seven files.”
Eli stood behind me.
My mother saw him.
“I thought I was helping girls who could not raise babies.”
“You declared children dead,” he said.
“At first, I believed the mothers had agreed. Then I learned Pike was lying.”
“When?”
“Before Nora gave birth.”
“And you still let her deliver at St. Catherine’s?”
“Pike threatened to expose her pregnancy to her father.”
“My father knew I was pregnant.”
My mother looked away.
“Thomas Bennett was not your father.”
I felt the world tilt again.
“Who was?”
She looked toward the ambulance where Adrian sat in custody.
“No.”
Her silence answered before her voice did.
Adrian Pike had not merely delivered my children.
He was my biological father.
That made either Mara or Celeste not only his daughter, but my half-sister.
The other woman was my child.
Eli stared at me.
Then at Adrian.
The family tree had become a circle of crimes.
Mara approached holding an evidence envelope recovered from Adrian’s coat.
Inside were two DNA reports.
One bore her name.
The other bore Celeste’s.
Adrian had already completed the testing.
Mara opened the first report.
Her hands began to shake.
“What does it say?” I asked.
She looked at me.
Then slowly handed me the page.
Probability of maternity: Nora Bennett—99.99%.
May you like
Mara Velez was Emma.
My daughter had spent the night investigating her own disappearance.
