Chapter 5 - THE FIRE IN THE RECORDS WING
Smoke rolled through the east corridor within minutes.
Detective Ortiz ordered an evacuation while Marcus pushed Elise’s wheelchair toward the stairwell. Adrian stayed beside her.
“Where are Clara and Mia?” Elise demanded.
“Safe.”
“You saw them?”
“I held them.”
Her face broke.
“Clara still hates peas?”
“Yes.”
“She still sleeps with the hall light on?”
Adrian swallowed. “I don’t know yet.”
That answer hurt them both.
On the ground floor, firefighters moved toward the records wing. Ortiz stopped a maintenance employee trying to leave through a side door with a backpack.
Inside were two hard drives, a stack of shredded patient labels, and twelve thousand dollars in cash.
The employee kept repeating, “I was told to clean the room.”
“By who?” Ortiz asked.
He looked at Adrian.
“Mr. Mercer.”
Charles.
Victoria’s father.
Elise grabbed Adrian’s sleeve.
“He handled everything after my accident.”
“What accident?”
“The one they said you caused.”
Adrian stared at her.
She told him the story in fragments. Eighteen months earlier, she had discovered irregular transfers inside the Vale Family Trust. She planned to tell Adrian. Before she could, her car was hit on a rural road. She woke in a hospital with a head injury.
Charles appeared with documents showing Adrian had petitioned for sole custody, claiming Elise was unstable.
“I believed you hated me,” she whispered.
“I believed you were dead.”
Ortiz returned holding one partially burned folder rescued from the records room.
The patient name read ELEANOR HART.
On the back was a physician’s note:
PATIENT SHOWING IMPROVED MEMORY. REQUESTS CONTACT WITH ADRIAN VALE. DO NOT ALLOW UNSUPERVISED CALLS.
Below it was a handwritten instruction.
Continue sedation until after wedding date.
Signed: V.M.
May you like
Elise looked at Adrian.
“Victoria Mercer.”
