CHAPTER 7 — Phase Two
Daniel moved his family into a police-protected apartment.
Only Detective Valdés and three senior officers knew the location.
The windows were reinforced.
Cameras covered every entrance.
Uniformed police guarded the hallway.
Still, the following morning, a package appeared outside the apartment door.
No one had seen it delivered.
Inside was a stuffed lion.
Inés smiled when she saw it.
“Leo used to have one like this.”
Daniel stopped her before she touched it.
A bomb technician examined the toy.
There was no explosive.
But hidden behind one plastic eye was a microphone.
The device was active.
Someone had been listening to everything said inside the apartment.
Valdés ordered the building evacuated.
“How did they find us?” Daniel demanded.
“Either they followed someone here,” Valdés said, “or someone on my team told them.”
The microphone’s signal led to an empty car parked three blocks away.
Inside the trunk, police found photographs of the family entering the apartment.
They also found a white medical coat.
There was blood on one sleeve.
Camila had been injured.
That evening, Leo began screaming in his sleep.
Mariana woke him gently.
“You’re safe.”
Leo looked around the apartment.
“Where’s Inés?”
“She’s sleeping in the next room.”
Leo grabbed Mariana’s hand.
“Don’t let the white lady take her to the red door.”
Daniel stepped closer.
“What red door?”
Leo described a building where Esteban had kept him before Patricia’s house.
There were hospital beds.
A long hallway.
A red metal door at the bottom of a staircase.
He remembered hearing babies crying in another room.
Mariana covered her mouth.
Detective Valdés showed Leo photographs of several properties connected to Esteban.
Leo pointed to an abandoned private maternity clinic outside the city.
The building had closed six years earlier.
Esteban’s company had renovated it shortly before bankruptcy.
Valdés organized a raid.
As officers prepared to leave, Leo tugged Daniel’s sleeve.
“Daddy, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“The white lady used to talk to a policeman.”
“Do you remember his name?”
Leo nodded.
“He told her when you were coming.”
Daniel slowly turned toward Detective Valdés.
Leo pointed at a framed photograph of Valdés’s investigation team.
His finger settled on the man standing beside her.
“Officer Reyes.”
At that same moment, Valdés’s phone rang.
May you like
Reyes had disappeared from the police station.
And he had taken the clinic raid plans with him.
