The key fit perfectly.
A staircase descended into darkness.
Each step made my face throb.
At the bottom, I entered a long corridor lined with cracked glass panels. Behind them stood laboratory tables, sealed cabinets, medical equipment, and rows of refrigerated storage units.
This was not an abandoned room.
Someone had been using it recently.
“Melanie?” I called.
A light flickered on.
My sister sat in a chair at the far end of the laboratory.
Walter Pike stood beside her.
But Melanie was not tied up.
She rose slowly.
“You came.”
My hand tightened around the key.
“You staged the kidnapping.”
“Yes.”
Walter lifted both hands.
“Please, Sadie. We did not intend to frighten you.”
“You drugged yourself and pretended my parents imprisoned you.”
“No,” Walter said. “Your parents did imprison me. But I escaped the hospital because the police were asking the wrong questions.”
Beckett’s voice sounded in my ear.
“Keep them talking.”
I took another step.
“What is this place?”
Walter looked around the hidden laboratory.
“Your grandfather’s real legacy.”
Melanie swallowed.
“Grandpa wasn’t just a developer.”
“I know.”
“No,” she said softly. “You don’t.”
She opened a metal drawer and removed a worn leather notebook.
On the cover were two initials.
H.D.
Grandpa.
Walter spoke carefully.
“Harold funded experimental medical research. Quietly. He believed a private laboratory could move faster than universities and corporations.”
“What kind of research?”
Melanie turned toward me.
“Regenerative nerve treatment.”
My heart stopped.
“Why?”
“For you,” she said.
I almost laughed.
“What are you talking about?”
Melanie’s eyes filled with tears that did not look staged this time.
“You were born with a degenerative condition affecting the optic nerve.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It was corrected when you were a baby.”
My fingers went cold.
Walter opened the notebook.
“Harold developed an early treatment using stem-cell-derived compounds. It restored the damaged nerve tissue.”
I touched the bandage over my eye.
“That treatment worked?”
“Yes,” Walter said. “You were the first successful patient.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath me.
“My parents never told me.”
“They were paid to remain silent,” Walter said.
“Paid by whom?”
He looked toward the locked storage units.
“By the company that wanted the formula.”
Before he could say more, the lights went out.
A gunshot exploded through the laboratory.
Melanie screamed.
Walter fell.
And from the darkness, my mother’s voice whispered:
“Your grandfather should have destroyed this place when he had the chance.”
—
PART 4
THE MOTHER WHO CAME BACK WITH A GUN
Emergency lights flashed red along the floor.
I dropped behind a metal table as another bullet shattered glass above my head.
“Police!” Beckett shouted from the stairwell. “Drop the weapon!”
My mother laughed.
“You think the police can protect her?”
