Chapter 12 - The Driver's Confession
My knees nearly gave way. “You drove the van?”
Ward's hand closed around his key ring. “I was ordered to. Colson said your father had been injured and needed a secure ride to a private clinic. I wasn't told he was a prisoner.”
“Did he speak?”
“He asked me to call you. I didn't.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted him to feel a fraction of the mornings I'd awakened expecting Dad to knock on the door. Instead I said, “Then you tell my lawyer.”
“They'll make me disappear too.”
“Maybe. Or maybe somebody will finally stop them. Those are the choices.”
Ward walked away so quickly his keys jingled like a warning bell.
At noon, Hazel found me sitting on the edge of my bunk. I told her about Ward, the warden, and my father's last message. She listened, then opened the back of her battered dictionary. A narrow envelope had been tucked between its covers.
“Gloria gave me this before they took her,” she said. “I wasn't going to show you until I knew you could handle what was in it.”
Inside lay a copy of a work order, a photocopied medication invoice, and four names beneath the number 7310. Celeste Rowan. Gloria Moss. Rhea Vale. Sofia Bell.
“Why hide it?”
“Because every woman who touched the original file got punished.”
I studied the invoice. Harrow Medical billed the state for emergency stabilization of Sofia Bell, including a drug administered two days after she was supposedly transferred to a hospital in another county.
“Can Leah use this?”
“If she can show where it came from.”
I copied the invoice details on the back of a permitted legal note. I could not smuggle the actual paper to Leah without risking its disappearance in a search. We needed a clean chain of custody.
A bell announced movement. Ward appeared at our bars. He held a clipboard against his chest.
May you like
“I've decided,” he said. “I'll give a statement.”
Then he added, “But you need to know what happened to Rhea last night.”
