Chapter 17 - The Queen's Last Order
Lucie stepped into the chapel with an empty blue binder under her arm. Mercer stood beside the black case. A phone lay on top of it, its screen showing Rosa in a warehouse office, frightened but alive.
"Where's the ledger?" Mercer asked.
"Where are the women you shipped away?"
"You think you can bargain with me?"
"I think you came because you can't tell Vale that the records are already outside."
His face changed. "Who's helping you?"
Behind the chapel doors, footsteps multiplied. Valérie had quietly told the women on her tier to attend evening prayer. They entered in rows and sat on the floor. No shouting. No fists. Sixty inmates refused to leave.
Mercer glanced at the crowd. "Moreau, clear this room."
Valérie stood at the front. "No."
"I've kept you safe for seven years."
"You kept my son in danger for seven years. You kept me useful. That's not the same thing."
Mercer signaled the officers. Raines stepped between them and the seated women. "Sir, the chapel is on a live security feed. They aren't threatening anyone."
Mercer pulled a radio from his belt and ordered a facility-wide lockdown. Steel doors thundered shut. The women flinched but stayed seated.
"We know about Denise Bell," Lucie said loudly. "We know about the other women. We know the signatures were forged."
A woman in the back began crying. She held up a folded picture. "My sister was on that bus. Her name was Angie. Tell me where she is."
For one second, Valérie looked like she might take command the old way—with a threat. Instead she knelt beside the woman and put an arm around her.
Mercer lunged for Lucie's binder. She let him snatch it. Empty pages fluttered onto the floor.
"There's nothing here!" he shouted.
"That's right," Lucie said. "You came all this way to prove what you were afraid of."
Raines's radio crackled. A different voice cut through the channel.
May you like
"State investigators at the main gate. We have a judicial order. Open immediately."
Mercer reached under his jacket.
