## CHAPTER 13 ### The Woman Beneath the Boathouse
Rebecca Valdés was alive.
Camila confirmed it through tears.
She had not seen her sister-in-law in three decades, but the handwriting on the photograph belonged to Rebecca.
The phrase “dies again” referred to the public story Arturo created after her disappearance.
According to Camila, Rebecca had been the only member of the family who openly challenged Arturo.
She studied law, refused an arranged marriage and investigated financial transfers connected to the Hart-Valdés merger.
Then, during a family weekend at Lake Arrowhead, she vanished.
Arturo claimed she took a boat out during a storm.
No body was recovered.
A memorial plaque was installed near the water.
Daniel remembered something else.
He had not buried Rebecca.
He had dug her out.
During his missing forty-eight hours after the canyon, Arturo’s men brought him to the boathouse. A sedated woman was trapped in an underground cell. Daniel was ordered to seal the entrance.
Instead, he returned later, opened it and helped her escape.
The toxin had damaged the sequence of his memories.
“Where did she go?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t she expose Arturo?”
“She may have tried.”
Michael searched federal records.
A woman matching Rebecca’s age had entered witness protection twenty-nine years ago under a sealed order signed by Marcus Vale’s father.
The corruption passed through generations.
We now faced Arturo, Marcus and possibly Rebecca at the cabin.
It might be a trap.
But my mother and Mara were there.
Tomas was injured.
Arturo demanded the infants because each represented a different claim.
Lucia carried combined Hart lines and controlled the reversion clause.
Hope was Michael’s biological daughter and evidence of Arturo’s illegal reproductive program.
Grace was Arturo’s biological daughter and his planned replacement heir.
The babies remained under hospital protection.
We had no intention of moving them.
Daniel proposed using decoy carriers.
Detective Moreno refused to involve civilians.
Rafael reminded her that local police departments included officers who owed favors to Arturo.
In the end, a federal tactical unit took control.
At four in the morning, a convoy headed toward Lake Arrowhead.
I remained in the hospital.
This time, I did not attempt to leave.
Lucia needed me alive.
Rafael traveled with the tactical team. Daniel and Michael went because Arturo demanded them. Camila stayed with me and the infants.
Bianca sat beside Grace’s incubator.
She had not spoken since learning the child was Arturo’s daughter.
Every few minutes, she asked whether the police had found her son.
No one had.
Tomas’s missing daughter, Amelia Reyes, was confirmed as Hope’s surrogate mother. Clinic records suggested she had survived the delivery, but her location remained unknown.
At 4:47 a.m., the convoy reached the burned cabin.
The old boathouse still stood at the edge of the lake.
Fog covered the water.
Daniel and Michael approached carrying three empty infant carriers.
Rafael remained with the tactical unit in the trees.
Marcus appeared first.
He held a rifle.
Mara knelt beside the boathouse door with her hands tied. My mother sat in a wheelchair several feet away.
Tomas lay motionless near the dock.
“Where are the children?” Marcus asked.
“In the carriers,” Daniel said.
“Open them.”
“Release the women.”
Marcus laughed.
“You have never understood negotiation.”
A second figure emerged.
Rebecca Valdés.
She was in her sixties, with silver hair cut to her chin and a long scar across her throat. She held a gun against Marcus’s back.
“Neither have you,” she said.
Marcus froze.
Mara rolled away.
Daniel dropped the carriers and drew his weapon.
The tactical unit moved from the trees.
Shots erupted from the opposite shoreline.
Arturo had positioned men across the lake.
Rebecca fired into Marcus’s leg.
Michael dragged my mother behind the boathouse.
Daniel cut Mara’s restraints.
Rafael ran toward Tomas.
A bullet struck the dock beside him.
Tomas opened his eyes and pulled Rafael into cover.
He had pretended to be unconscious.
The gunfire lasted less than two minutes.
Arturo’s men retreated into the forest.
Marcus was arrested.
Rebecca surrendered her weapon.
Arturo was not at the cabin.
He had designed the confrontation to gather everyone in one place while he moved elsewhere.
“Where?” I asked through Rafael’s body camera feed.
Rebecca looked directly into the camera.
“The hospital.”
I turned toward the room door.
Camila was already standing.
Security alarms sounded downstairs.
Arturo had used the cabin crisis to pull federal officers away from St. Catherine’s.
Detective Moreno called hospital command.
No answer.
The neonatal cameras went offline.
Bianca ran toward the unit.
Camila and I followed, despite the pain.
The hallway was empty.
Two police officers lay unconscious near the elevator.
Not dead.
Drugged.
The locked neonatal doors stood open.
Lucia’s incubator was empty.
So were Hope’s and Grace’s.
Bianca screamed.
A nurse crawled from beneath the desk.
“Three men,” she whispered. “They had hospital credentials.”
“Where did they go?”
“Service elevator.”
We reached the loading bay in time to see an ambulance turning onto the street.
Camila grabbed the keys to a hospital transport van.
I climbed into the passenger seat.
“You cannot chase them,” she said.
“My daughter is inside.”
Bianca jumped into the back.
The van accelerated after the ambulance.
Hospital security notified police, but Arturo had prepared multiple identical vehicles. Four ambulances left different exits at the same time.
We followed the nearest.
It headed toward the coast.
Rafael called.
“Do not engage.”
“Then reach us faster.”
“Elena, he wants you to follow.”
“I know.”
“Then stop.”
“No.”
Bianca leaned between the seats.
“The old family chapel.”
“What?”
“Father had all of us baptized there. It is near the cliffs.”
The ambulance turned toward the private coastal road leading to the chapel.
We followed at a distance.
The building appeared beyond wind-bent trees, abandoned and dark.
The ambulance stopped behind it.
No one emerged.
Camila parked.
Police were twelve minutes away.
We could hear infants crying inside the chapel.
Bianca ran first.
We entered through the side door.
Three empty incubators stood near the altar.
Recorded crying played through hidden speakers.
“It’s a trap,” Camila said.
The doors slammed shut.
Gas hissed from the vents.
Bianca threw a chair through a stained-glass window.
We climbed out as smoke filled the chapel.
Outside, the ambulance was gone.
A phone lay on the hood of our van.
It began ringing.
I answered.
Arturo’s voice spoke through the speaker.
“You were always predictable, Elena.”
“Where is Lucia?”
“Safe.”
“If you hurt her—”
“I need her alive.”
“Where?”
“The place where this family began.”
“The estate?”
“No.”
Camila’s face changed.
She knew.
Arturo continued.
“Come alone, Camila. Bring the original vault key.”
The call ended.
I looked at my mother-in-law.
“What place?”
She stared toward the ocean.
“A monastery in Mexico. Arturo’s grandfather bought it before he built the company.”
“How quickly can we reach it?”
“You cannot.”
“My daughter is there.”
“Not yet. Arturo is still moving.”
Bianca picked up the phone.
A tracking application appeared on the screen.
Three signals moved south along the coast.
One for each infant.
Arturo wanted us to follow.
Camila removed a chain from beneath her dress.
A small iron key hung from it.
“The vault does not contain jewelry,” she said.
“What does it contain?”
“The records of every child Arturo’s family stole.”
She closed her hand around the key.
May you like
“And proof that one of those children became president of the United States.”
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