Chapter 8 - THE FLIGHT THAT NEVER LANDED
Federal agents tracked the plane over the Atlantic until its transponder vanished.
The news networks immediately called the disappearance mysterious.
Silas called it a tragic equipment failure.
Margaret appeared in a carefully staged interview and claimed Khloe had run away because I was harassing her.
I watched the broadcast from a prison common room while strangers debated whether I deserved another twenty-five years.
The cruelty of it almost made me laugh.
Silas had once told me he wanted a private island where nobody could tell him what to do.
Now he was turning the whole world into a stage on which he played the bereaved husband.
Ward knew the plane had not simply vanished.
Its flight plan crossed a corridor near an offshore landing strip once leased by a Vance subsidiary.
The subsidiary had been sold by Silas for a fraction of its value.
Harrison found the buyer's address was a mailbox in Delaware.
The actual beneficial owner was concealed behind the CB-02 accounts.
“We need to stop following paper,” I told Ward.
“Follow the medical supplies.”
A woman nearing labor would need a medical team, oxygen, and specialized equipment.
Those arrangements were harder to hide than money.
Ward's team flagged a refrigerated medical shipment destined for an abandoned marine research facility.
The manifest listed three neonatal incubators.
“Three?” Harrison asked.
Khloe was expecting one child.
Ward did not like the discrepancy.
The federal team arrived during a storm.
Inside they found a surgical suite, fresh linens, and restraints fastened to a hospital bed.
There was blood on the floor, but no patient.
A video monitor remained plugged in.
Its storage drive had been smashed.
A technician recovered enough data to reconstruct nine seconds of footage.
The image showed Khloe strapped to the bed.
She was shouting at someone outside the camera's view.
Then a woman approached.
She wore a surgical mask, but the tattoo at her wrist was visible.
Mara Bell.
Harrison called me from the courthouse corridor.
“I think Mara is alive, Evelyn.”
I thought of the woman who had scheduled my father's appointments and remembered every birthday.
I thought of the phrase written on the visitor's card.
Ask about Mara Bell.
“Was she helping Khloe or hurting her?” I asked.
“We don't know.”
An hour later, investigators found a sealed neonatal case at the rear of the facility.
Inside was a single empty infant blanket.
Pinned to it was a card.
May you like
‘THE FIRST CHILD BELONGED TO CLARA.’
