Chapter 5 - The Woman on the Phone
I pressed the phone harder against my ear.
“Where are you?”
The fire alarm drowned out Amelia’s first answer.
Nurse Collins pushed a wheelchair toward the bed.
The officer checked the hallway.
Smoke was spreading across the ceiling.
“Elena, we have to move.”
I held up one finger.
“Amelia, say it again.”
“I’m at the old north house.”
Her breathing was shallow.
“Wade knows the recordings survived.”
“He ordered the fire alarm.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Ruth called him from the station.”
“That is impossible.”
“They took her phone.”
“She has another one inside her shoe.”
I looked at the officer.
“Ruth has a hidden phone.”
He immediately contacted Detective Ellis.
Amelia continued speaking.
“They will use the service elevator.”
“They have hospital uniforms.”
“What do they want?”
“The phone.”
“And the girls.”
“Why my daughters?”
“Because they inherit through Thomas.”
“Caleb is not Thomas’s son.”
“But you are connected to the trust.”
“I am not a Mercer.”
“Thomas changed the trust after he met you.”
The words made no sense.
“I never met Thomas before I married Caleb.”
“Yes, you did.”
“When?”
“You were six years old.”
My childhood memories moved through my mind.
My father had served at Fort Bliss.
We had lived near El Paso before moving to San Antonio.
I remembered a tall man visiting our home once.
He brought my father a wooden box.
They argued in the garage.
My father told me never to repeat the visitor’s name.
Mercer.
I had forgotten until that moment.
“What did Thomas want from my father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please.”
“I cannot explain everything on the phone.”
A door slammed on Amelia’s end of the line.
She stopped breathing.
“Amelia?”
Someone walked across a wooden floor near her.
She whispered even more softly.
“They found the house.”
The call disconnected.
I tried calling back.
The number was no longer in service.
Nurse Collins locked the wheelchair brakes beside me.
“We need to evacuate.”
I allowed her to help me sit up.
Pain spread through my abdomen and back.
The room tilted.
I gripped the mattress until my vision cleared.
The officer returned from the hallway.
“The main elevators have been disabled.”
“What about the service elevator?”
His expression changed.
“It is still operating.”
“Amelia said they would use it.”
He contacted security.
No one answered.
Detective Ellis’s voice came over his radio.
She was on the third floor with Ranger Grant and Judge Hale.
Sofia and Emma were on the fifth floor with Tessa.
I was on the fourth.
The fire had started inside a storage room beside the main stairwell.
Sprinklers were working, but smoke blocked the nearest exit.
Detective Ellis ordered officers to secure every service-elevator door.
Then the radio cut into static.
The officer pushed my wheelchair into the hallway.
Patients and staff moved toward the west stairs.
Some nurses carried oxygen tanks.
Others guided elderly patients through the smoke.
The fire alarm continued its relentless scream.
We traveled less than twenty feet before the service elevator chimed behind us.
The doors opened.
Two people in hospital scrubs stepped out.
Both wore surgical masks.
One pushed an empty gurney.
The other carried a medical bag.
They turned directly toward me.
The officer raised his hand.
“Stop.”
The taller person reached inside the medical bag.
The officer drew his weapon.
The masked figure threw the bag toward the floor.
A burst of white powder filled the hallway.
Nurse Collins coughed.
The officer turned his face away.
The second person rushed forward with the gurney.
It struck my wheelchair.
I nearly fell.
Nurse Collins grabbed the handles and pulled me backward.
The officer shouted for the suspects to show their hands.
One ran toward the stairwell.
The other abandoned the gurney and disappeared into the service elevator.
The doors began closing.
The officer fired no shot.
Patients were everywhere.
He lunged forward and struck the emergency stop button, but the elevator descended.
A white plastic badge lay on the floor near the gurney.
Nurse Collins picked it up with a gloved hand.
The photograph belonged to a male orderly.
The person who wore it had been a woman.
I had seen her eyes above the mask.
She was the blonde nurse who tried to make me sign the psychiatric form.
The officer relayed the description.
Then he examined the medical bag.
Inside were syringes, sedatives, zip ties, and two small hospital gowns.
Both gowns were child-sized.
They intended to remove Sofia and Emma as patients.
The officer looked at the west stairwell.
“We need to reach the girls.”
“I’m coming.”
“You need to evacuate.”
“My daughters are upstairs.”
Nurse Collins did not argue.
She turned the wheelchair and pushed me toward another service corridor.
“We can use the laundry stairs.”
The officer led the way.
Smoke thickened near the ceiling.
Each breath tasted bitter.
The laundry stairwell was narrow and hot.
Nurse Collins could not carry the wheelchair upward.
I stood.
My legs shook.
“You cannot climb,” she said.
“I can.”
The first step sent pain through my entire body.
I climbed anyway.
I held the railing with both hands.
The officer stayed one step below me.
Nurse Collins supported my back.
We reached the fifth floor as alarms continued echoing.
The door was locked from the other side.
The officer struck it with his shoulder.
It did not move.
He called Tessa.
No answer.
He called the officer assigned to the girls.
No answer.
Then a child screamed beyond the door.
Emma.
I hit the metal with my palm.
“Emma.”
“Mommy?”
“Move away from the door.”
The officer stepped back and drove his shoulder into the lock again.
The frame cracked.
On the third strike, the door opened.
The hallway beyond was empty.
A uniformed officer lay unconscious beside the nurses’ station.
His weapon remained secured in its holster.
Tessa’s phone was on the floor.
Sofia and Emma were gone.
I could not breathe.
The officer checked the unconscious deputy.
“He has a pulse.”
Nurse Collins found a puncture mark near his neck.
“He was injected.”
We followed the sound of Emma’s voice.
It came from a treatment room at the end of the hall.
The door was locked.
Sofia was shouting from inside.
The officer broke the latch.
Both girls were crouched beneath an examination table.
Tessa lay beside the wall.
Blood ran from a cut above her eyebrow.
She was conscious but dazed.
A woman in blue scrubs stood near the window.
Her surgical mask was gone.
She had blonde hair.
She held a syringe against her own forearm.
“Stay back,” she warned.
The officer raised his weapon.
“Drop the syringe.”
“You do not understand.”
“I understand you attempted to abduct two children.”
“I was ordered to move them.”
“By whom?”
She looked toward me.
“Your husband.”
I stepped into the room.
“Caleb is in custody.”
“He has people everywhere.”
“Drop it,” the officer repeated.
The woman’s hand shook.
“I did not know they would kill the baby.”
“You helped forge my records.”
“Price told me you were dangerous.”
“You locked my children in this room.”
“I kept them away from the elevator.”
Sofia raised her head.
“She’s telling the truth.”
The officer glanced at her.
Sofia pointed toward the blonde woman.
“She pushed the other man out.”
“What other man?” I asked.
“A man dressed like a doctor.”
“He wanted to put us on the gurney.”
The blonde nurse looked at me.
“He was going to sedate them.”
“I stopped him.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know his real name.”
“Price called him Dean.”
“Where did he go?”
“The roof.”
The nurse lowered the syringe.
“He said the helicopter would take the girls to Wade’s ranch.”
The officer secured her wrists.
She did not resist.
Tessa regained enough focus to sit up.
She confirmed that a man wearing a physician’s coat had entered with an evacuation order.
He showed paperwork bearing Dr. Patel’s signature.
The blonde nurse arrived behind him.
At first, Tessa believed both worked for the hospital.
Then the man injected the officer.
When Tessa fought him, he struck her.
The blonde woman turned against him before he could take the girls.
The man escaped through the roof-access door.
Detective Ellis arrived with Ranger Grant moments later.
She hugged Sofia before remembering she was on duty.
Then she examined the room.
The blonde nurse identified herself as Kendra Moss.
She admitted Price hired her to alter records and monitor me.
She claimed Wade promised to erase an old drug charge if she cooperated.
She also admitted delivering prenatal blood samples under the name Amelia Rowe.
“Where did you take them?” Ranger Grant asked.
“A private laboratory in Dallas.”
“What was tested?”
“Fetal sex.”
“Paternity markers.”
“And genetic comparison against a preserved sample from Thomas Mercer.”
My heart pounded.
“What did the comparison show?”
Kendra looked at me.
“The baby was related to Thomas Mercer.”
“That is impossible.”
“Caleb is not Thomas’s son.”
“The report did not compare the baby to Caleb.”
“It compared the fetus directly to Thomas.”
“Why?”
“Wade ordered it.”
Ranger Grant leaned closer.
“What was the result?”
Kendra swallowed.
“The baby was Thomas Mercer’s biological grandson.”
The room became silent.
Caleb was not Thomas’s son.
Yet Samuel was Thomas’s grandson.
There was only one explanation they expected us to believe.
They would claim Caleb was Thomas’s child after all.
But the original birth certificate and recordings contradicted that.
Unless the biological connection came through me.
I looked at Judge Hale, who had just entered behind Detective Ellis.
His face had turned white.
“Your father knew my father,” I said.
Hale nodded slowly.
“Thomas visited my childhood home.”
“Your father may have been connected to the Mercer family.”
Ranger Grant asked Owen Park to examine the trust documents and stored DNA records.
Then the roof door slammed somewhere above us.
The man called Dean was still inside the building.
Officers rushed toward the stairs.
A helicopter engine started overhead.
Ranger Grant ran after them.
Detective Ellis stayed with us.
She ordered the girls moved to an interior room under armed guard.
Before we left, Kendra called my name.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“Wade did not only test the baby.”
“He tested Sofia and Emma last year.”
My daughters stared at her.
“Why?”
“Because Ruth believed one of them might activate another part of the trust.”
“Did they match Thomas?”
Kendra nodded.
“Both of them.”
I felt the floor disappear beneath me.
“That cannot be true.”
Kendra’s eyes filled with fear.
“The laboratory report says Thomas Mercer was their biological grandfather.”
Judge Hale took one step backward.
He looked at me as though he were finally seeing my face.
Then he whispered my father’s full name.
“Samuel Torres.”
I nodded.
Hale closed his eyes.
“My mother had a brother.”
“A baby who was taken away before she married.”
“His adopted name was Samuel Torres.”
My father had not merely known Thomas Mercer.
He had been part of the Mercer bloodline.
My daughters and my lost son were Thomas Mercer’s biological descendants through me.
The trust had never needed Caleb.
It needed my children.
A gunshot cracked from the roof.
The helicopter engine stopped.
Ranger Grant shouted over the radio.
Then a second shot echoed.
Detective Ellis locked the treatment-room door.
The radio came alive with Grant’s voice.
“The suspect is down.”
“The pilot escaped.”
“We found a passenger already inside the helicopter.”
Detective Ellis asked for identification.
Grant paused.
Then he answered.
“It is Ruth Mercer.”
But Ruth was supposed to be in custody.
Before anyone could respond, another voice came over the radio.
Officer Daniels sounded breathless.
“The woman we arrested at the hospital was not Ruth.”
May you like
“She was wearing a wig and carrying Ruth’s identification.”
“The real Ruth has been free the entire time.”
