CHAPTER 8: THE TRAITOR INSIDE
The clinic went into lockdown.
Detective Ortiz questioned every person who knew Claire’s location.
The list was short.
Ortiz.
Dr. Patel.
Two nurses.
The clinic director.
And me.
Security footage showed no unauthorized entry into Claire’s room.
The photograph had been taken through a narrow window in the door.
Whoever took it had legitimate access.
One nurse, Melissa Grant, had worked for Dr. Vale six years earlier.
She denied contacting him.
Police searched her locker.
They found twenty thousand dollars in cash.
Melissa broke within an hour.
Diane had contacted her months earlier.
At first, she paid Melissa for copies of Claire’s prenatal records.
Later, she asked for appointment schedules and medication information.
“She said Claire was dangerous,” Melissa cried. “She said she was protecting the baby.”
“Who took the photograph?” Ortiz asked.
“I did.”
“Where is Diane?”
“I don’t know.”
Ortiz placed the cemetery photograph on the table.
“Then explain how she knew exactly when Claire was asleep.”
Melissa covered her face.
“She calls from different numbers.”
“What did she ask you to do next?”
Melissa did not answer.
Ortiz leaned closer.
“What did she ask you to do?”
“Move Claire.”
“Where?”
Melissa wrote an address.
It belonged to an isolated maternity home forty miles outside Portland.
The facility had closed twelve years earlier.
Police raided it before dawn.
Again, Diane was gone.
But this time, she had left something behind.
A nursery.
The walls were freshly painted pale yellow. A crib stood beneath the window. Baby clothes filled the drawers.
On a shelf were framed photographs of me as a child.
Not one picture of Claire.
A handwritten card sat inside the crib.
WELCOME HOME, BABY WALKER.
My mother had prepared a room for our child.
On another table, officers found guardianship documents naming Diane as the baby’s legal caretaker in the event both parents became incapacitated.
“She planned to remove both of you,” Ortiz said.
A storage room contained sedatives, false identification cards and medical restraints.
There was also a hospital transport uniform in Diane’s size.
She had intended to have Claire transferred from the clinic while posing as medical staff.
Melissa’s information allowed police to stop the plan.
But something still felt wrong.
Diane never left evidence accidentally.
Every discovery pushed us toward a place she had already abandoned.
“She wants us to focus on the baby,” I said.
Ortiz looked at me.
“What else would she want?”
“My father.”
Evergreen Hills answered on the first call.
Thomas was missing.
A nurse had taken him to the garden shortly before sunrise. When she turned away to help another resident, a vehicle entered through a service gate.
Thomas was gone within thirty seconds.
Security footage showed Aunt Linda driving.
Linda’s phone was now disconnected.
I called every number I had for her.
No response.
Then Thomas called me.
His voice sounded strained.
“Ethan, don’t let them file the documents.”
“What documents?”
“The estate papers.”
“Where are you?”
“Your grandmother’s trust.”
I heard Diane in the background.
“Tell him.”
Thomas continued.
“Rachel was the beneficiary. After she died, the money should have passed to you.”
“How much money?”
“More than twenty million dollars.”
My mother had told us our grandmother died penniless.
Thomas took a shaking breath.
“Diane forged Rachel’s death records. Legally, the trust still lists your sister as alive.”
I struggled to understand.
“Why?”
“So Diane could continue withdrawing money through a false identity.”
A door slammed in the background.
Thomas whispered, “She needs your baby.”
“For what?”
“To create an heir connected to Rachel’s identity.”
The call ended.
Ortiz immediately contacted the trust’s bank.
Someone had scheduled a meeting for that afternoon to modify the beneficiaries.
The client’s name was Rachel Walker.
The identification photograph attached to the appointment showed Claire.
Diane planned to impersonate my dead sister using my pregnant wife’s identity.
If the documents were filed before Claire gave birth, my mother could place the entire stolen fortune under our child’s name.
Then she intended to control the child.
The abuse, the drugs and the guardianship petition were not separate crimes.
May you like
They were parts of one plan.
And the final step was scheduled to happen in less than three hours.
