Chapter 12 - THE SON BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR
By the time I reached the coastal road, police lights flashed against the wet trees. Officers had stopped one van at the property gate. The second had made it only as far as a service road.
I waited behind the line Quinn had drawn, shaking so hard that my cane tapped against my shoe.
Twenty minutes passed. Then forty.
Finally a paramedic came toward me. "Mrs. Swift? Your son is alive."
The world narrowed to those five words.
Julian lay inside an ambulance with a blanket over his legs and an IV taped to his wrist. He was thinner. A healing cut crossed one eyebrow. The face I'd searched for in news reports and dreams turned slowly toward me.
"Mom?"
I climbed in before anyone could offer help. "I'm here."
His mouth trembled. "I tried to get home."
"I know."
"Maya?"
"Safe. She asks for you every night."
He began to cry without making a sound. I held my grown son's hand the way I had held it after he broke his arm at seven.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"You have nothing to apologize for."
"I trusted Halden. I told him what Mercer was doing. He said he'd protect Maya."
I closed my eyes. Betrayal wasn't a single knife. It was an entire drawer of them.
At the hospital, Julian insisted on speaking to Quinn before resting. He told her he'd found that foundation money was being diverted through fake service contracts. He'd arranged the harbor meeting to hand the records to an independent auditor. Someone had learned of it.
"They kept me alive because they thought I had the master access code," he said. "I didn't. Dad's instructions made sure of that."
"Who was giving the orders?" Quinn asked.
"Mercer. Halden. Vanessa came once."
A nurse adjusted his blanket and left the room. Julian stared after her, suddenly rigid.
"The woman at the clinic," he whispered. "She looked just like that nurse."
"Who?"
"The doctor who kept asking if I'd signed away Maya's trust. Mom, you know her."
May you like
He gripped my sleeve.
"She's the one who treated you in Switzerland."
