CHAPTER 6 — THE ABANDONED CENTER
Detective Hale refused to let me go alone.
So we made Richard believe I had.
I drove my rental car toward Beaufort with an unmarked police vehicle several miles behind me.
The abandoned rehabilitation center stood beyond a rusted gate, half-hidden by pine trees and hanging moss.
Its windows were boarded.
Its roof sagged in the middle.
I parked near the entrance and stepped out with my hands visible.
“Richard!”
My voice echoed through the empty property.
A light appeared on the second floor.
Then Vanessa’s face emerged behind a broken window.
Her mouth was covered with tape.
Her hands were bound.
Someone pulled her away.
My phone rang.
Richard.
“Leave your purse in the car,” he instructed.
I obeyed.
“Walk inside.”
The building smelled of mildew and antiseptic.
Old wheelchairs lined the hallway.
Water dripped somewhere inside the walls.
Richard directed me through the phone until I reached a former treatment room.
Vanessa sat tied to a metal chair.
A bruise darkened one side of her face.
Richard stood behind her holding a pistol.
“You always were obedient when frightened,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“The flash drive. The journal. Every copy.”
“The police have them.”
His smile disappeared.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“You killed Margaret.”
“I kept her comfortable.”
“You drugged her.”
“She was becoming irrational.”
Vanessa tried to speak through the tape.
Richard struck the back of her chair.
“Be quiet.”
I took one step forward.
“You told her Margaret wasn’t my mother.”
Richard’s eyes narrowed.
“Margaret stole you.”
“From Laura?”
He laughed softly.
“Laura was incapable of raising a child.”
“What did you do to her?”
For the first time, something uncertain moved across his face.
That was when I heard it.
A sound beneath the floor.
Three slow knocks.
Pause.
Then three more.
Vanessa heard it too.
Her eyes widened.
Richard lifted the pistol toward me.
“Give me the bank key.”
“It opened the box.”
“It opens something else.”
The knocking came again.
Richard glanced toward the floor.
That moment was enough.
Vanessa threw her weight sideways, knocking the chair into his knees.
The pistol fired.
The bullet tore into the ceiling.
I rushed him.
We crashed against a rusted medical cart.
Police officers stormed into the room seconds later.
Richard was dragged to the ground.
Detective Hale tore the tape from Vanessa’s mouth.
“There’s someone downstairs,” she gasped. “He’s kept her here for years.”
Hale found a trapdoor beneath an old examination table.
The brass key opened it.
A narrow staircase descended into darkness.
At the bottom was a locked room.
Inside, sitting beneath a single light, was an elderly woman with dark hair and a scar over her left eyebrow.
She looked at me and began to cry.
“My baby,” she whispered.
May you like
Then she turned toward Vanessa.
“You brought him back.”
