CHAPTER 19 — THE CHILD LIVES
The newborn was moved into a guarded neonatal intensive care room.
Khloe saw her daughter through the glass several hours later.
The baby’s tiny chest rose beneath a nest of wires and blankets.
Dr. Reed stood beside her.
“She’s strong.”
Khloe pressed her fingers against the glass.
“Hope.”
“What?”
“Her name is Hope.”
Dr. Reed smiled.
“It suits her.”
Gabriel placed four armed guards around the NICU.
No one entered without biometric confirmation.
Marcus watched from the opposite side of the corridor.
Khloe did not ask him to leave.
But she did not invite him closer.
The escaped orderly was identified as Peter Voss, a private security contractor employed by Thorne Global.
Marcus claimed he had never met him.
Evelyn claimed the company had thousands of contractors.
Peter’s apartment was searched.
Inside, police found cash, false passports, and photographs of Khloe taken throughout her pregnancy.
There were also photographs of another woman.
She appeared to be in her early thirties.
Dark hair.
Hazel eyes.
The same small crescent-shaped birthmark near her left eyebrow that Khloe had inherited from her mother.
On the back of one photograph were the words:
H-1 CONFIRMED ALIVE
Khloe stared at the woman’s face.
“She looks like me.”
Gabriel’s voice was barely audible.
“She looks like your mother.”
Marcus studied the photograph.
“Who is she?”
A detective turned it over.
A location had been written beneath the date.
SAINT AURELIA HOSPITAL — SUBLEVEL FOUR
Gabriel frowned.
“This hospital only has three sublevels.”
Khloe looked toward the floor.
“Apparently, it has four.”
A security engineer checked the original building plans.
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A hidden elevator shaft had been sealed nineteen years earlier.
The same year Celeste Cole supposedly died.
