Chapter 12 - THE GIRL WITH ANNA'S BADGE
Tessa held Anna’s badge between two fingers.
No one moved.
The tunnel lights were dead, but Ruiz’s flashlight cut a white circle across Tessa’s face.
Her eyes looked enormous inside it.
Nand raised her pistol.
“Put the badge on the floor.”
Tessa obeyed.
The plastic card struck the concrete and spun once.
“Step away from it,” Nand said.
Tessa stepped backward until her shoulders touched the shelving.
I could hear Rourke’s men cutting through the security door behind us.
The metal screamed with every strike.
We did not have time for an interrogation.
We also did not have time to trust the wrong person again.
“How did the badge get into your pocket?” I asked.
Tessa’s lips trembled.
“I took it.”
“Why?”
“Because the woman at the motel told me to.”
“What woman?” Ruiz asked.
“The one pretending to be a housekeeper.”
Tessa swallowed.
“She cornered me while you were fighting in the terminal.”
“She showed me a live video of my brother sitting in his middle school gym.”
“She said if I did not bring the badge out of the courthouse office, he would leave school in an ambulance.”
Nand’s expression did not soften.
“What is your brother’s name?”
“Samuel Moore.”
“Age?”
“Twelve.”
“School?”
“Lincoln Prep.”
Nand handed her phone to Rachel.
“Call the district police commander and verify.”
Tessa shook her head.
“They said no police.”
“People who threaten children always say no police,” Ruiz answered.
“They prefer frightened families.”
The cutting sound behind us stopped.
Silence spread through the corridor.
Dane looked toward the door.
“They are placing a charge.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Less than a minute.”
Nand picked up Anna’s badge using a handkerchief.
“Why did Lily say the person who brought it was standing beside Daniel?”
Tessa looked confused.
“I did not bring it to Lily.”
Dane took the badge from Nand and held it beneath the flashlight.
A tiny green dot blinked near the magnetic strip.
“Because this is not Anna’s original badge,” he said.
“What is it?”
“A duplicate with a transmitter inside.”
He bent the plastic until it cracked.
A flat circuit board had been sealed between the layers.
The green light went dark.
“The badge was broadcasting our location,” Ruiz said.
Tessa covered her mouth.
“I did not know.”
“You still took it,” I said.
“They had my brother.”
“And they had my daughter.”
The words came out harder than I intended.
Tessa flinched.
Lily would have hated the way I said them.
She had always been better than me at remembering that frightened people still had reasons.
The security door bent inward with a thunderous impact.
Dane pointed toward the elevator shaft.
“There is a ladder behind the panel.”
“Where does it lead?” Rachel asked.
“Street-level maintenance room.”
“And after that?”
“St. Agnes.”
“You know where Lily is?” I asked.
“I know where the white room was built.”
“Whether she is still there depends on how quickly we move.”
We entered the shaft one at a time.
Ava and her mother climbed first.
Rachel followed with the pink backpack.
Nand went next.
Tessa reached for the ladder.
I caught her wrist.
“If this is another trap, tell me now.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I helped Lily because she was the first person at Bradley who did not treat me like a charity case.”
“My mother cleans rooms at the Whitaker Hotel.”
“My tuition came from an employee scholarship.”
“Evelyn reminded me every semester that she could take it away.”
“Lily told me a scholarship was not ownership.”
Tessa looked toward the door about to fail.
“I betrayed her location once because they threatened Sam.”
“I will spend the rest of my life knowing what they did after that.”
“You do not get to fix it by dying here,” I said.
“You fix it by telling the truth when it costs you something.”
I released her.
She climbed.
Ruiz went after her.
Dane and I remained in the tunnel.
The security door buckled inward.
Dane removed two small charges from his maintenance bag and placed them on the shelf supports.
“You carry explosives into federal buildings?” I asked.
“I carry options.”
“That answer used to impress me.”
“It should still comfort you.”
He handed me the detonator.
“When the door opens, wait until you see the first two men.”
“I thought you were coming.”
“I am.”
“Then why give me the trigger?”
“Because you still need to decide whether I deserve to reach the ladder.”
The door split down the center.
A rifle barrel pushed through.
I watched the gap widen.
Rourke stepped into view wearing a respirator and body armor.
A second man moved behind him.
I pressed the trigger.
The shelving collapsed in a roar of paper, steel, and concrete dust.
The blast did not kill them.
It buried the corridor and bought us seconds.
Dane reached the ladder before me.
I could have left him below.
Part of me wanted to.
The part that had watched the traffic video wanted to close the panel and let the man who stood over Anna’s wreck disappear under the building.
Then I remembered his voice on the recording.
I do not know who Mark works for anymore.
Dane had not sounded like a killer speaking to a victim.
He had sounded like a man trying to recover something before another killer arrived.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the shaft.
“Do not make me regret that.”
“I have been regretting things longer than you know.”
We climbed as gunfire struck the metal below us.
The maintenance room opened into an alley behind the courthouse.
Nand had commandeered a county transport van.
Ava and her mother were hidden beneath blankets in the rear.
Rachel sat beside them.
Ruiz drove.
Tessa clutched a phone to her ear.
“My brother is safe,” she said as I climbed in.
“District police found him in class.”
“They never had him.”
“They only had the camera.”
The relief on her face changed into rage.
That rage might save her later.
St. Agnes Clinic had closed fifteen years earlier.
The brick building stood behind a chain-link fence on the south edge of Peoria.
Most of its windows had been covered with plywood.
A small plaque near the gate thanked the Whitaker Foundation for preserving the historic property.
Preserving was another word people used when they did not want anyone asking what happened inside.
Dane guided Ruiz to a drainage entrance behind the old laundry wing.
The gate was new.
Anna’s duplicate badge opened it.
“They wanted us to come,” Nand said.
“Maybe,” Dane answered.
“Or they never expected us to learn the card was tracked.”
We left Ava and her mother with two county officers Nand trusted enough to call by first name.
Rachel stayed with them despite protesting.
Her job was to preserve the archive and keep Ava alive.
Mine was Lily.
Ruiz, Nand, Tessa, Dane, and I entered the clinic.
The lower corridor had been renovated behind the abandoned exterior.
White tile covered the walls.
Modern surveillance cameras turned silently above us.
Dane used a handheld jammer taken from the motel duffel.
The camera lights went dark.
We passed rooms containing hospital beds, restraint chairs, and cabinets filled with sealed medication packs.
Most were expired.
Some were not.
One cabinet held patient bracelets labeled with student names from Lily’s list.
Ava Sinclair.
Madison Reed.
Kylie Turner.
Grace Holloway.
Jenna Price.
Four more.
Nine bracelets.
Nine women processed through the same hidden clinic.
Ruiz photographed every shelf.
Nand opened a file drawer.
Inside were unsigned settlement agreements and prewritten psychiatric evaluations.
Each evaluation described the patient as intoxicated, emotionally unstable, and unable to provide reliable testimony.
The same phrases appeared in every document.
“They wrote the girls’ credibility before the girls woke up,” Ruiz said.
Tessa read one page and began to cry again.
The name at the top was Madison Reed.
“She lived across the hall from me freshman year.”
“They told us she had a breakdown.”
“What happened to her?”
“No one knew.”
Dane opened the next door.
The white room from Lily’s video waited inside.
The metal chair stood beneath a surgical lamp.
Leather restraints hung open.
Anna’s real hospital badge lay on the floor beside the drain.
This one had no transmitter.
I picked it up.
There was dried blood near the edge.
Not old blood.
Lily’s blood.
A tablet rested on a rolling tray.
Its screen displayed the final frame of the call.
The video had been prerecorded.
Lily had not been in the room when we answered.
The background image had been looped to make us believe she was.
Tessa stared at the tablet.
“Then how did she know who was beside Daniel?”
Dane pointed to the camera in the ceiling.
“They watched us through the badge transmitter and changed the text in real time.”
The message was not Lily’s warning.
It was designed to turn us against one another.
It had worked.
A muffled impact came from behind the tiled wall.
Three taps.
Pause.
Three more.
I followed the sound to a stainless-steel cabinet.
The cabinet was bolted to the floor.
Dane found a release latch beneath the bottom shelf.
The entire unit swung outward.
A narrow room existed behind it.
Lily lay on a mattress with her wrists tied in front of her.
Her face was pale beneath the bandages.
An oxygen tube rested beneath her nose.
Her eyes opened when I entered.
The sound that came from me was not a word.
I dropped beside her and cut the ties.
She pressed both hands against my chest as though she needed to prove I was real.
“I have you,” I whispered.
“I have you.”
Her body shook.
She could not cry without pain, so tears ran silently into the edge of her bandage.
Tessa appeared behind me.
Lily saw her.
For one terrible second, her eyes filled with betrayal.
Tessa stopped at the hidden doorway.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“I gave them the meeting point.”
“They threatened Sam, but that does not change what happened.”
“I am sorry.”
Lily looked at her for a long time.
Then she lifted one trembling hand.
She tapped twice against the mattress.
Yes.
Tessa covered her face.
It was not forgiveness.
Not yet.
It was only acknowledgment that she had heard.
That was more than I would have given.
Ruiz found another prisoner in the room beside Lily’s.
He wore a campus police uniform without a belt or shoes.
His beard was gray, and bruises covered his ribs.
Chief Owen Price had led Bradley Campus Safety for thirteen years.
He was also the father of Jenna Price, the fifth name on Lily’s list.
Dane cut him free.
Price looked at Lily first.
Then he looked at me.
“I tried to stop Hale from taking her,” he said.
“You failed.”
“Yes.”
He did not defend himself.
That made it harder to hate him quickly.
“What happened at Calder Hall?” Ruiz asked.
“Evelyn ordered Hale to recover the phone and frighten Lily.”
“Connor arrived drunk.”
“Rourke brought another Sentinel man.”
“Hale stood at the camera console and deleted the feed.”
“Connor struck Lily when she refused to unlock the phone.”
“Rourke held her.”
“The third man filmed it for leverage.”
“Who was the third man?”
Price looked at Dane.
“Professor Elias Ward.”
Lily’s mentor.
The man who had taught her that truth required courage.
“Ward filmed the assault?” I asked.
“He filmed Connor losing control.”
“He thought the recording would protect him.”
“Where is he?”
“Evelyn had him moved after the attack.”
“To where?”
Price shook his head.
“I do not know.”
Nand checked the corridor.
“We need to leave before the clinic team returns.”
Price grabbed her sleeve.
“You have less than seventy-two hours.”
“For what?”
“The Founders Gala is Saturday night.”
“At midnight, Bradley’s archive system runs its annual purge before the new fiscal year.”
“Every shadow file, access log, and medical transfer record will be destroyed.”
“Can it be stopped remotely?” Nand asked.
“No.”
“The purge key is physical.”
“It is kept inside Whitaker Hall during the gala.”
Lily pulled at my sleeve.
I gave her the tablet from the rolling tray.
Her fingers moved slowly across the screen.
She typed four words.
MOM HID SOMETHING THERE.
“Inside Whitaker Hall?”
Lily nodded.
“How do you know?”
She typed again.
WARD SHOWED ME HER PHOTO.
Before she could write more, every door in the clinic slammed shut.
Red emergency lights filled the corridor.
A woman’s voice came through the ceiling speakers.
Meredith Shaw.
“You found the girls, Daniel.”
“Now let us see whether you can get them out before the building burns.”
May you like
Smoke began pouring beneath the far door.
The seventy-two-hour clock had already started.
