Chapter 13 - FIFTY-THREE HOURS
The deadline on the proposed explosion was less than a day away.
Rachel obtained an emergency warrant covering the annex's contract and safety records.
Her team found that the listed chemical inventory was fictitious.
The ventilation shutdown was real.
Someone intended to destroy evidence while leaving enough paperwork to call the result an accident.
Professor Vale remained inside.
Rachel coordinated with federal inspectors and local emergency services to access the property under lawful authority.
I stayed at the hospital.
Every part of my old life screamed that I should be leading the entry.
Instead I sat beside Chloe and watched the second hand crawl around the clock.
She noticed my clenched jaw and wrote STOP DOING THAT.
"Doing what?" I asked.
LOOKING LIKE YOU WANT TO BREAK A WALL.
I laughed for the first time in days.
She rolled her eyes, which made the laugh harder to stop.
Then she wrote DAD I NEED YOU HERE.
The message struck deeper than an order ever could.
At 4:12 p.m., Rachel called.
Inspectors had found the annex empty except for damaged equipment and a recently abandoned office.
No Vale.
No Evelyn.
The demolition contractor claimed a cancellation request had arrived that morning.
The explosion would not happen, but the people we needed were gone.
A locker held Vale's glasses, a disposable phone, and a sealed envelope addressed to Chloe.
Inside was a handwritten confession.
Vale admitted he had allowed Holbrook to use the university lab for unauthorized trials because the company threatened to withdraw grants supporting dozens of students.
He said he later discovered data from the collision had been deliberately altered.
He had asked Chloe to help him reconstruct it, believing a student would attract less attention.
He apologized for placing her in danger.
Then he wrote that Eleanor Hale was Evelyn Vance and that she had been kept alive under another identity for twelve years.
The letter did not explain why she had stayed away from us.
Its last sentence was stranger still.
Evelyn is not being held by the people you think.
Someone had left a trail for us, but it led deeper into uncertainty.
Rachel's search of the annex yielded a single security image of Vale leaving in the rear seat of a gray vehicle.
The passenger beside him wore a scarf over her hair.
Her face was turned away.
On the driver's wrist was a black bracelet embroidered with the old Vanguard emblem.
That emblem had never been commercially produced.
May you like
Only twelve of us had received one.
