Chapter 5 - THE NIGHT MY HUSBAND CHOSE A SIDE
Three men entered.
Luka fired first.
The shot hit the wall beside the lead attacker.
“Down!”
I dropped behind the kitchen island with Grace.
Derek stayed beside me.
A bullet shattered the window.
Glass rained across the floor.
Grace screamed.
Something inside me changed.
Fear became rage.
These people had invaded my hospital.
Stolen my daughter's blood.
Burned my mother's laboratory.
And now they were shooting at my newborn.
Derek grabbed my hand.
“There's a cellar.”
We crawled toward the pantry.
Another gunshot.
Luka shouted from the hallway.
“Move!”
Derek opened a hidden floor panel.
“Go.”
I climbed down.
“Come with me.”
He looked toward Luka.
“I need to help him.”
“You'll get killed.”
Derek looked at Grace.
For the first time since the hospital, I saw the man I thought I had married.
“I already abandoned her once.”
His eyes filled.
“I won't do it twice.”
He closed the panel.
I sat in darkness holding my daughter.
Gunshots thundered above us.
Then silence.
One minute.
Two.
Three.
The panel opened.
I raised a broken bottle I'd found beside an old wine rack.
Luka looked down.
“Creative.”
“Where's Derek?”
His expression told me.
“No.”
I climbed out.
Derek was lying beside the stairs.
Blood covered his shoulder.
“Derek!”
His eyes opened.
“I'm okay.”
“You've been shot.”
“Technically grazed.”
Luka tore open his shirt.
The bullet had passed through the outside of Derek's shoulder.
Painful.
Bloody.
But survivable.
One attacker remained alive.
Luka dragged him into the kitchen.
“Who sent you?”
The man laughed.
Luka pressed his thumb against the wound in the man's leg.
He screamed.
“Who sent you?”
“Calloway.”
“Charles?”
The attacker smiled.
“No.”
Luka froze.
“Then who?”
The man looked directly at Derek.
“Your mother.”
Derek went white.
“My mother is dead.”
The attacker laughed again.
“That is what Charles told you.”
My skin prickled.
Derek's mother, Evelyn Calloway, had supposedly died when Derek was nine.
Cancer.
There had been a funeral.
Photographs.
Newspaper articles.
Luka crouched beside the attacker.
“Where is Evelyn?”
The man's smile disappeared.
“You'll find out soon enough.”
He bit down.
Luka grabbed his jaw.
Too late.
The man's body convulsed.
Poison capsule.
Seconds later, he stopped moving.
Derek stared.
“My mother is alive?”
Luka stood.
“Apparently.”
Derek looked lost.
“Why would she attack us?”
I remembered something.
The M-17 folder.
I ran toward it.
There.
Participant number eight.
EVELYN MARSH.
I pointed.
“Derek.”
He read the name.
His face collapsed.
“That's my mother's maiden name.”
Luka took the file.
Evelyn Marsh had been one of the original seventeen women.
Pregnancy outcome:
FAILED.
Except someone had handwritten a note beside it.
FETUS SURVIVED. TRANSFER AUTHORIZED.
Derek looked at Luka.
“What does transfer mean?”
Luka slowly lifted his eyes.
“I think it means Charles lied about what happened to those sixteen babies.”
My stomach turned.
“You said they died.”
“That was what the records showed.”
“Then where did they go?”
Nobody answered.
Luka searched the attacker's pockets.
He found a phone.
One unread message glowed on the screen.
Bring M-17 and the infant to Facility Nine.
Below it was an address.
Derek stared at it.
“I know that place.”
“Where?”
“My family's old psychiatric hospital.”
Luka looked at me.
“Facility Nine.”
I held Grace tighter.
Derek whispered.
“My mother didn't die.”
May you like
His face became pale.
“She was committed there.”
