Chapter 9 - PIER TWELVE
The crying on the phone did not sound like a recording.
Infants wailed at different pitches, some strong and angry, others thin with exhaustion.
Mercer let us listen for several seconds before speaking again.
"Pier Twelve."
"Thirty minutes."
"The ledger, Leo, and no police."
Lorenzo looked at the bracelets inside Sofia's empty coffin.
"If one child is harmed, I will tear apart every hospital, charity, and home you ever touched."
Mercer sighed.
"That is why men like you should never be fathers."
"You mistake possession for love."
"Bring the boy."
The call ended.
For one moment, the mausoleum held only Celeste's ragged breathing.
Then Lorenzo turned to Matteo.
"Contact Enzo."
"Tell him to keep Leo at Mercy Children's and lock down the entire floor."
"No one enters without Naomi's approval."
"Mercer will know Leo isn't with us," Matteo said.
"He already expects deception."
"Then we give him something else to watch," Lorenzo replied.
He removed the wooden infant figure from the cream blanket Matteo had carried back from the failed east gate trade.
The carved face looked peaceful and lifeless.
I hated seeing it wrapped like a real child.
"He asked for Leo," I said.
"He is getting wood and cloth."
"What happens when he checks?"
"By then, we will have the children."
Celeste shifted against the marble tomb.
"You won't reach them."
Blood continued spreading beneath her hand.
"Pier Twelve is a kill box."
"Mercer uses the neonatal truck as bait and loads the babies onto a vessel from the water side."
"Which vessel?" Matteo asked.
"It changes."
"Tonight it will fly a medical relief flag."
"No customs inspection."
Lorenzo crouched in front of her.
"Why are you helping us?"
Celeste gave him a tired smile.
"Because Bianca shot me after I carried your wooden son across the garden."
"Mercer left me to bleed."
"Loyalty becomes less beautiful when it is not returned."
"That is not redemption," I said.
"I did not ask for redemption."
Her gaze moved toward me.
"I asked for enough time to make them regret leaving me alive."
I tore another strip from my uniform and pressed it against her wound.
She hissed.
"You should let me die."
"People keep telling me that tonight."
I tightened the cloth.
"You know where children were sent."
"You stay alive until you tell us every address."
Matteo reached Enzo on an encrypted radio.
Leo was stable and feeding.
Mercy Children's had sealed the neonatal floor with armed hospital security and two federal teams Harper trusted.
Sofia was undergoing scans for a concussion.
Bianca had been moved to the same hospital under guard.
The information should have reassured me.
Instead, the thought of Sofia and Bianca beneath one roof made my skin prickle.
One woman had held Lily safely.
The other had used her image to force a trade.
Both knew more than they had told us.
Lorenzo placed the ledger inside a waterproof evidence case.
Matteo photographed every page before closing it.
Then he gave the drive and infant bracelets to a young guard named Luca, who had arrived through the cemetery with a medical team for Celeste.
"Take these to Harper," Matteo ordered.
"Use no radio and no marked vehicle."
"If anyone follows, destroy the car before you surrender the case."
Luca nodded without asking whether he was expected to survive.
That was the kind of loyalty Lorenzo's world demanded.
We left the mausoleum in two vehicles.
Matteo drove the first with Celeste lying across the back seat under the care of a field medic.
Lorenzo drove the second.
I sat beside him with the false bundle in my arms.
The rising sun turned the wet streets silver.
Commuters waited at bus stops, coffee shops opened, and delivery trucks moved through intersections.
The city had no idea babies were being traded at its waterfront before breakfast.
"You don't have to come onto the pier," Lorenzo said.
"We have already discussed this."
"This is not the mansion."
"There will be no walls to protect you."
"Walls did not protect anyone at the mansion."
He glanced at me.
"You are injured, exhausted, and grieving."
"So are you."
"I am used to functioning that way."
"That isn't the strength you think it is."
His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
For several blocks, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, "Sofia believed hiding was the only way to protect Leo."
"Was she wrong?"
"He was poisoned inside my home while I believed I controlled every door."
"So yes."
"She was wrong."
"And I was worse."
The admission surprised me.
Lorenzo Rossi did not look like a man who often allowed guilt to become language.
"You didn't poison him," I said.
"I built the kind of house where everyone was too afraid to tell me the truth."
"The staff saw Celeste drinking."
"They heard Leo crying."
"No one entered because the rule mattered more than the child."
He looked at the false bundle in my arms.
"That rule was mine."
"You made it after Sofia died?"
"After a housekeeper tried to photograph Leo and sell the image."
"I punished everyone for one person's betrayal."
I thought of the three rules posted beside the staff entrance.
Keep your head down.
Never speak to the armed guards.
Never enter the nursery.
Rules designed to preserve order had created silence.
Silence had nearly killed Leo.
We reached the industrial waterfront with nine minutes remaining.
Pier Twelve sat beyond a row of abandoned warehouses and rusted cranes.
Fog rolled in from the river.
A white neonatal transport truck waited near the water.
Its emergency lights flashed without sound.
A long vessel rested beside the pier flying the blue emblem of an international medical charity.
Men in white jackets moved between the truck and the ship carrying insulated bassinets.
They looked like doctors.
Their rifles did not.
Lorenzo stopped the SUV two hundred feet away.
Matteo's vehicle parked behind us.
"Six visible shooters," Matteo said through the radio.
"Likely more aboard."
"Mercer?" Lorenzo asked.
"Not visible."
A loudspeaker mounted on the transport truck crackled.
"Walk forward with the child and the ledger."
Mercer's voice echoed across the water.
Lorenzo took the false bundle from me and placed the evidence case in his other hand.
"Stay behind the engine block."
"You cannot rescue infants while carrying a rifle."
I opened the passenger door.
"If we reach the truck, I go inside."
He started to object.
"I know newborns," I said.
"You know gunmen."
"Use what we each have."
Matteo joined us, wearing a concealed vest beneath his coat.
He handed me a small earpiece.
"Enzo has a team approaching from the river in an unmarked tug."
"Harper's agents are six minutes away."
"Mercer said no police," I replied.
"Mercer also said he would return your daughter," Matteo said.
"We have learned his promises are not useful."
Lorenzo and I walked onto the pier together.
Matteo remained behind the vehicles.
Gunmen tracked our movement from the ship's deck.
The transport truck's rear doors stood open.
Inside, clear bassinets were secured to metal racks.
I counted eleven babies.
One bassinet was empty.
LILLIAN BENNETT had been written across its label.
My heart hammered.
"Where is she?" I shouted.
Mercer's voice answered through the speaker.
"Closer."
Lorenzo raised the false bundle.
"Show me Lily."
A monitor inside the truck turned on.
The screen showed a baby girl lying in a hospital room.
Sofia sat beside her.
The timestamp was current.
Mercy Children's.
The room number appeared briefly in the corner.
"She is at the hospital," I whispered.
"Mercer knows where."
The image changed.
A man dressed as an orderly entered the room behind Sofia.
He carried a syringe.
"You have three minutes to place Leo inside the truck," Mercer said.
"Otherwise my colleague completes his work."
Lorenzo touched his earpiece.
"Enzo, Mercy room seven-twelve."
No response came.
The signal had been jammed.
The man on the screen moved closer to Sofia.
I ran toward the truck.
Gunmen shouted.
Lorenzo threw the false bundle through the open doors.
The carved figure struck the floor and rolled free of the blanket.
For one startled second, every shooter looked at it.
Lorenzo drew his pistol.
Matteo opened fire from behind the vehicles.
The pier erupted.
I climbed into the neonatal truck as bullets struck its metal walls.
The babies screamed.
A man in a white coat reached for me.
I slammed the empty bassinet into his knees.
He fell.
I locked the rear doors from inside and crawled between the racks.
Several babies had oxygen tubes.
Two had IV lines.
The truck began moving.
Someone had climbed into the cab.
The babies rolled in their secured beds as the vehicle accelerated toward the ship's loading ramp.
I grabbed a metal support rail and shouted into the earpiece.
"The truck is moving."
"Mara," Lorenzo answered through heavy gunfire.
"Get out."
"There are eleven babies inside."
"The truck is heading for the ship."
The vehicle struck something hard.
One bassinet latch snapped.
I caught it before the infant tipped sideways.
A red emergency lever was mounted beside the rear doors.
I pulled it.
Nothing happened.
The controls had been disabled.
The ship's loading ramp filled the narrow rear window.
We were seconds from boarding.
Then a black tugboat slammed into the side of the vessel.
The impact shifted the loading ramp.
The truck's front wheels missed the metal path.
We tilted toward the river.
Babies slid inside their restraints.
I threw myself across two bassinets as the truck balanced on the edge of the pier.
Through the rear window, I saw Lorenzo running toward us.
Mercer stepped from the ship's shadow behind him.
He raised a gun at Lorenzo's back.
I screamed a warning.
The shot fired.
May you like
Lorenzo fell.
At the same instant, the truck tipped forward and plunged into the river with eleven babies and me trapped inside.
