Chapter 4 - The Escape Plan
When Detective Vance burst back into the room a few minutes later, his face was pale and his breathing was ragged.
“Leo? Are you okay?” he demanded, holstering his gun and rushing to the bed.
“He was here,” I whispered, trembling as I clutched the papers. “The man. He stood right beside my bed.”
Vance cursed loudly, running his hands through his hair. “Security caught a glimpse of an intruder on the third-floor stairwell, but he vanished. We locked down the entire hospital, checked every exit, but he slipped through like smoke. Leo, did he touch you? Did he say anything?”
“He said Mom was clever for trying to hide us,” I replied, handing the pages back to the detective. “And he said we’d be seeing each other soon.”
Vance read the desperate lines in Mom’s letter, his eyes widening as he reached the part about Arthur, my supposed grandfather. “An address? Sarah never mentioned an Arthur. In all our missing persons databases, she was listed as an orphan with zero living relatives.”
“Mom lied to keep us safe,” I said with sudden, fierce conviction. “Just like she hid us in the woods. She said the past has long arms that can reach across states.”
Vance stared at me for a long moment, realizing that the seven-year-old sitting in front of him possessed a maturity forged in the fires of isolation and survival. He made up his mind right then and there.
“Listen to me, Leo,” Vance said, leaning in close so the nurses outside couldn't overhear. “The hospital isn't safe anymore. Julian has eyes everywhere, and local law enforcement is too slow to protect a ghost story like this. We are getting you and the babies out of here tonight.”
“Where are we going?”
“To find Arthur,” Vance said grimly. “Whatever past your mother was running from, we’re about to drag it out into the light.”
Getting out of the hospital required a quiet, high-stakes operation. Vance coordinated with a trusted colleague, a veteran officer named Chief Miller, who arranged for an unmarked transport van to pull up to the loading dock while a diversion was staged on the opposite side of the building. Nurses wrapped my brother and sister in heated transport incubators, wheeling them swiftly through the service corridors.
I stayed glued to Vance’s side, my hand gripping the hem of his jacket as if my life depended on it—because it did.
As we reached the loading dock, the cool night air hit my face, smelling of rain and asphalt. The unmarked van waited with its engine idling softly. Vance picked me up, placing me safely in the backseat next to the secure infant carriers where the twins slept restlessly.
“We’re clear,” Chief Miller muttered into his radio as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
The van lurched forward, accelerating down the empty industrial alley behind the medical center. But as we turned onto the main highway leading out of town, the beam of our headlights swept across a pair of glowing eyes parked on the shoulder.
May you like
It was the dark sedan.
It sat silently in the gloom, its engine dead, watching us pass. Then, its brake lights flared red like angry eyes, and it pulled out onto the highway behind us, keeping a chilling, deliberate distance.
