Chapter 11
We followed the signal through rain.
The convoy moved without lights.
Grant spoke quietly into her radio.
I sat behind her, one hand on my belly, the other gripping Marcus’s letter.
I had not opened it.
Not yet.
Opening it felt like accepting he was gone.
And now he might not be.
The tracker stopped near an abandoned children’s hospital in the Blue Ridge foothills.
My skin went cold.
A hospital.
Of course.
A place where cries could be explained.
Where paperwork could bury people.
Where locked doors looked official.
Grant ordered drones first.
Thermal imaging showed twenty-seven heat signatures.
Adults.
Children.
One isolated in the basement.
My heart knew before anyone said it.
Marcus.
The raid began at 2:13 a.m.
Windows shattered.
Doors blew open.
Agents moved floor by floor.
I stayed in the command vehicle until a child was carried out.
A little girl wrapped in a military jacket.
She was maybe four.
She kept saying, “Where is my mommy?”
Something in me snapped.
I got out.
Reeves tried to stop me.
I looked at him.
He stepped aside.
Inside, the hospital smelled like bleach and old fear.
Rooms held files.
Cribs.
Medication carts.
Forged guardianship papers.
A nursery full of children with service-member parents listed as deceased.
Some were not deceased.
Some were inconvenient.
Grant’s voice came over the radio.
“Basement secure.”
I ran.
As much as a pregnant woman in body armor can run.
Down the stairs.
Past broken locks.
Past blood on concrete.
Then I saw him.
Marcus.
Chained to a pipe.
Beard grown in.
Face bruised.
Alive.
His eyes opened.
“Amelia?”
I fell to my knees.
“I’m here.”
His hand moved to my stomach.
“Our baby?”
“Safe.”
May you like
He cried.
So did I.
