Chapter 10 - Room Twelve
Shoreline Clinic had been abandoned long enough for trees to grow through cracks in the parking lot.
The three-story brick building stood two blocks from Lake Michigan outside Racine, its windows boarded and its old emergency entrance hidden behind weeds.
Dominic arrived in a utility van with Vincent, Mercer, and four men whose loyalty Vincent had personally tested for years.
Arthur was not invited.
Martin Keane was not told where they were going.
The council believed Dominic remained at the estate.
Dominic preferred it that way.
They parked half a mile away and approached through the woods behind the clinic.
Rain had weakened to a cold mist.
Vincent moved ahead first.
"No exterior lights."
Dominic looked at the dark building.
"Does not mean no one is home."
Mercer stared at the facade.
"I trained here for six months."
Dominic turned.
"You never mentioned that."
"You never asked where I completed an orthopedic rotation twenty-two years ago."
"Tonight I am discovering a lot of things I should have asked."
Mercer accepted the criticism.
"Room Twelve used to be an imaging suite."
Vincent looked at the key tag in Dominic's hand.
"Basement?"
"First floor, east wing."
They entered through a broken loading door.
The clinic smelled of dust, mildew, and old disinfectant trapped in walls.
Their flashlights moved across abandoned gurneys and cabinets stripped of anything valuable.
Someone had been there recently.
Fresh footprints disturbed the dust.
Dominic saw one narrow tread with white limestone pressed into the grooves.
The greenhouse again.
Vincent followed the prints toward the east wing.
A handwritten number 12 remained above a steel door.
The lock was new.
Dominic inserted the key from the envelope.
It turned smoothly.
Vincent stopped him before he opened the door.
"Let me."
Dominic stepped aside.
Vincent pulled the door open from the wall side.
Nothing happened.
Inside was a room lit by a single battery lamp.
A woman sat in a chair facing them.
Clare.
Her wrists were bound in front of her.
Tape covered her mouth.
Dominic moved toward her.
Vincent caught his shoulder.
"Floor."
A thin wire ran from the chair leg to a metal box beneath an old imaging console.
Dominic stopped.
Clare's eyes widened as she tried to warn them through the tape.
Mercer whispered, "Is that an explosive?"
Vincent crouched without touching the wire.
"Could be."
Dominic looked at Clare.
"Do not move."
Her eyes filled with furious disbelief at the unnecessary instruction.
Even now, Dominic almost smiled.
Vincent traced the wire.
It connected not to explosives but to a pressure switch attached to the door.
If Clare stood before the circuit was broken, a battery would send current to something hidden beyond the wall.
"Not a bomb," Vincent said.
"Then what?"
"Give me a minute."
He removed the wall plate.
Behind it was a transmitter.
Mercer leaned closer.
"Alarm?"
"More likely a signal."
"To whom?"
Vincent cut the wire.
"We are about to find out."
Dominic reached Clare and removed the tape carefully.
She inhaled hard.
"Ellie."
"Safe."
"Are you sure?"
"I saw her after they took you."
Clare's eyes closed.
One tear escaped despite how hard she fought it.
"Thank God."
Dominic cut the restraint around her wrists.
"Can you stand?"
"Yes."
She tried and nearly fell.
Dominic caught her with one arm.
The movement sent pain through his own knee, but he did not let go.
Clare steadied herself.
"You are bleeding."
"Everybody keeps telling me."
She looked at him as if he were insane.
"Because you are."
For one second the room felt almost normal.
Then Vincent found the camera.
A small lens had been installed above the old imaging window.
"They were watching."
Clare's face tightened.
"I know."
Dominic looked at her.
"You saw it?"
"No."
"Then how do you know?"
"Because the man kept talking to someone who was not in the room."
Vincent turned.
"What man?"
Clare rubbed her wrists.
"The one who took me."
Dominic pulled up the photograph of Elias.
"Him?"
Clare studied it.
"Older now."
"But him?"
"I think so."
Vincent moved closer.
"Did he give a name?"
"No."
"Did anyone else come in?"
Clare nodded.
"A woman."
Mercer looked at her.
"Angela?"
"No."
"Describe her."
"Late forties, maybe fifty. Brown hair, short, expensive coat, medical gloves."
Mercer went completely still.
Dominic noticed.
"You know who that sounds like."
Mercer shook his head too quickly.
"Many women fit that description."
Clare stared at him.
"She called you Sam."
Mercer's face lost color.
Vincent stepped in front of him.
"Who?"
Mercer looked trapped.
"Dr. Evelyn Shaw."
Dominic waited.
"And who is Dr. Evelyn Shaw?"
Mercer swallowed.
"My former partner."
"Business?"
"Both."
Nobody spoke.
Mercer continued before Dominic could ask.
"We were engaged twenty years ago."
Vincent's expression hardened.
"That seems relevant."
"I have not seen her in twelve years."
Clare shook her head.
"She has seen you."
Mercer looked at her.
"What did she say?"
Clare's voice lowered.
"She said Sam still does what fear tells him."
Mercer sat down on the edge of an old cabinet.
Dominic stared at him.
"Explain."
Mercer rubbed both hands over his face.
"Evelyn worked with Daniel."
The name echoed through the abandoned room.
"Before the crash?"
"Before his supposed death."
"You knew Daniel was investigating something?"
Mercer nodded.
Dominic's anger sharpened.
"How many people knew my brother was alive except me?"
"I did not know he survived the crash."
"Answer carefully."
"I knew he was afraid someone was falsifying medical and insurance records connected to Vale shipping employees."
"Why would that matter?"
"Because those records were being used to create identities."
Vincent frowned.
"Fake employees?"
"Real names attached to people who did not exist, dead men listed as injured workers, injured workers listed as dead."
Dominic thought of the unidentified body buried as Daniel.
"Identity laundering."
Mercer nodded.
"Evelyn believed the network was larger than Daniel understood."
"And you?"
"I wanted nothing to do with it."
Dominic's voice turned cold.
"Fear told you what to do."
Mercer looked at the floor.
"Yes."
Clare interrupted.
"There is more."
Everyone looked at her.
"The man asked me questions about Ellie."
Dominic's posture changed.
"What questions?"
"What she remembers, whether she tells stories accurately, whether she recognizes faces after days pass."
Vincent swore quietly.
"They were assessing her as a witness."
Clare nodded.
"I told them she invents things."
Dominic looked at her.
"Does she?"
"No."
"Good."
Clare's eyes hardened.
"I also told them she could not recognize the man again."
"Can she?"
"Yes."
Dominic felt a new respect for her.
"Anything else?"
Clare hesitated.
"They argued."
"About what?"
"The woman wanted to move me before midnight."
"And the man?"
"He said Daniel wanted you to come here."
Dominic stopped breathing for a second.
"Daniel."
Clare nodded.
"He said the name exactly."
Vincent looked at Dominic.
"Your brother is alive."
Dominic did not answer.
A speaker mounted near the ceiling suddenly crackled.
Clare flinched.
The battery lamp dimmed.
Then a man's voice filled Room Twelve.
Older than Dominic remembered.
Rougher.
But familiar enough to reach across fifteen years and strike him in the chest.
"Hello, little brother."
Dominic stared at the ceiling.
Clare looked at him.
"Is that him?"
Dominic's voice barely moved.
"Yes."
Daniel Vale continued.
"If you are hearing this, then you found the girl, the nurse, the greenhouse, and Arthur's little secret."
Dominic looked around for the speaker source.
Vincent shook his head.
"Recorded."
Daniel's voice went on.
"You always were better when someone made you angry."
Dominic closed his hand around the cane.
"Come say it to me."
The recording could not answer.
"You are going to think this is about the chair at the head of the table."
A soft laugh came through the speaker.
"It is not."
"You are going to think I want what you built after I died."
Another pause.
"I do not."
The old speaker hissed.
"I want you to understand what you built it on."
A metal drawer beneath the imaging console popped open by itself.
Inside was a small digital recorder and a stack of documents.
Dominic approached slowly.
On the top document was his father's signature.
Beneath it were transfer orders dated sixteen years earlier.
Daniel's recorded voice delivered the final sentence.
"Dad did not choose you after I died, Dominic."
The speaker clicked.
May you like
"He chose you before he tried to have me killed."
