Chapter 10 - THE MOTHER WHO DISAPPEARED TWICE
Security footage showed Sarah leaving the hospital in a wheelchair.
A nurse pushed her through a service corridor.
The nurse’s identification badge belonged to Helen Moore.
Helen had worked at St. Matthew’s for eleven years.
Her personnel number ended in seventeen.
H-17.
Police found her car in the employee garage.
Blood marked the driver’s seat.
Helen had not left willingly.
Jason had taken her badge and uniform after attacking her.
The person pushing Sarah wore a mask and surgical cap.
At 2:18 a.m., he wheeled her into a laundry truck.
The truck left through the loading dock.
No one stopped it.
Emily was not told immediately.
Doctors feared the news would deepen her trauma.
I hated keeping another secret from her.
But Sarah had vanished because Jason wanted something.
He had the ledger.
He believed we had the original memory card.
Sarah was his bargaining tool.
At noon, Ortiz received a video.
Sarah sat in a dim room with tape around her wrists.
A newspaper dated that morning lay on her lap.
Jason remained behind the camera.
“Michael,” he said.
“You entered my home.”
“You stole my property.”
“You turned my family against me.”
I watched his shadow move across the wall.
He sounded calm.
That frightened me more than rage would have.
“You have until midnight to bring the original card to the Eastwood Recreation Center.”
“Come alone.”
“If I see police, Sarah dies.”
“If the card is copied, she dies.”
“If you fail to appear, she dies.”
Sarah lifted her face.
“Don’t do it.”
Jason struck something near the camera.
The image shook.
Then the video ended.
The Eastwood Recreation Center had been abandoned after a chemical leak.
Its indoor pool had been empty for years.
The symbolism was deliberate.
Jason wanted me inside another pool.
Ortiz refused to let me go alone.
“He expects surveillance.”
“He knows police procedures.”
“So what do we do?”
“We make him believe he is in control.”
Paul Denton agreed to assist in exchange for consideration from prosecutors.
He knew Jason’s habits.
He knew the escape routes Jason preferred.
Most importantly, he knew Jason never trusted a single location.
The recreation center would be a test.
Sarah would be somewhere else.
At 11:40 p.m., I entered the abandoned building carrying a card in a plastic case.
Ortiz and her team remained beyond the perimeter.
The empty pool waited beneath broken ceiling lights.
A phone rang at the bottom.
I climbed down the cracked steps and answered it.
Jason’s voice filled my ear.
“Look beneath the diving board.”
May you like
A small television turned on.
The screen showed a live image of Emily asleep in her hospital bed.
