Chapter 3: The Empty Apartment
Hannah’s apartment door was already open.
Adrian’s security chief, Maya Torres, entered first. She had worked for him for six years and was one of the few people Grant had not personally hired.
The living room had been torn apart.
Couch cushions lay on the floor. Kitchen drawers had been emptied. A lamp had been shattered beside the window.
“Mom!” Caleb called.
Maya stopped him from running farther inside.
“Stay behind me.”
Adrian rolled his wheelchair through the doorway.
A family photograph stood untouched on the bookshelf. It showed Hannah and Caleb at the beach.
Adrian picked it up.
Hannah looked older than he remembered, but her expression was the same.
Warm. Defiant. Alive.
“Did she tell you where she was going?” Adrian asked.
Caleb shook his head.
“She worked nights at a rehabilitation center. Yesterday she came home early and started packing.”
“Did she say why?”
“She said someone had found us.”
Maya entered the bedroom and returned carrying an empty medication bottle.
The label had been scratched off.
“She was taking something,” Maya said.
Caleb frowned.
“No. Mom hated pills.”
Maya slipped the bottle into an evidence bag.
Adrian noticed a framed drawing above Caleb’s bed. It showed a man in a wheelchair holding hands with a woman and a child.
“Did you draw that?”
Caleb nodded.
“Mom said you couldn’t walk because someone needed you to believe you never would.”
Adrian’s throat tightened.
“What exactly did she tell you about my condition?”
“That your legs weren’t asleep. They were being kept quiet.”
Maya looked at Adrian.
“Your medical treatment is controlled by Dr. Marcus Hale.”
Grant’s closest friend.
A sound came from the hallway.
Maya drew her weapon and moved toward the door.
A shadow crossed the frosted glass.
Then footsteps rushed toward the stairs.
Maya ran after the intruder.
Adrian tried to follow, but one wheel caught on the overturned rug.
Caleb hurried to help him.
As the boy bent down, Adrian noticed writing beneath the wheelchair cushion Caleb had been carrying.
A sequence of numbers had been written in Hannah’s handwriting.
Caleb looked at them.
“Mom said they would take us somewhere safe.”
“They look like coordinates,” Adrian said.
Maya returned, breathing hard.
“The person escaped.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“No. But he dropped this.”
She held up a hospital identification card.
May you like
The photograph belonged to Adrian’s private neurologist.
Dr. Marcus Hale.
