CHAPTER 4: THE COMPANY BENEATH MY NAME
Brooks Biomedical had been founded by my father twenty-eight years earlier.
Officially, the company developed diagnostic equipment and pediatric monitoring systems. After his death, I inherited a controlling interest but left daily operations to the board while I focused on the Brooks technology division.
I had visited the main research campus dozens of times.
I had shaken hands with scientists, toured laboratories, and posed for photographs beside children who had supposedly benefited from our charitable programs.
Now I wondered how many of those hallways concealed locked doors.
The countdown on Clara’s monitor gave us less than twelve hours.
Dr. Shaw copied the message and disabled the device.
“They want us frightened and moving quickly,” she said.
“It’s working,” Maren replied.
She held Clara while the twins slept nearby.
I called Brooks Biomedical’s chief operations officer, Leonard Price, from the landlord’s landline.
He answered on the fourth ring.
“Rowan?”
“Where are you?”
“At home. Have you seen the news?”
“I need access to the restricted sublevels at the research campus.”
Silence.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“I honestly don’t.”
“Two children are being held in my facility.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Then opening the doors shouldn’t be a problem.”
Leonard lowered his voice.
“You’re under enormous stress. The allegations against the Whitmores are serious, but you need to let law enforcement—”
“Daniel Mercer is on their payroll.”
Another pause.
Too long.
“Who told you that?” Leonard asked.
That was answer enough.
I hung up.
“He knows,” I said.
Maren adjusted Clara’s blanket.
“Of course he knows. People don’t hide children beneath a corporation without the person running the building noticing.”
I wanted to argue, but I had learned enough to stop defending powerful men simply because they wore respectable suits.
Dr. Shaw spread a printed campus map across the table.
“The medical program operated under a division called Advanced Regenerative Solutions.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“It doesn’t appear in public reports. Its budget is distributed among dozens of departments.”
“Where is the hidden facility?”
“Sublevel four.”
“There are only three sublevels.”
“There are three on official plans.”
She pointed to the eastern wing.
“A freight elevator inside the sterilization warehouse descends one additional floor.”
“How many guards?”
“Usually twelve.”
“And the children?”
“If the image is current, they’re in Observation Room Seven.”
Maren looked at me.
“You’re not bringing Clara there.”
“No.”
“They’ll kill those children.”
“No, they’ll threaten to. Clara is too valuable. The moment they have her, they have no reason to keep anyone alive.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“We enter through the old utility tunnel.”
Dr. Shaw frowned.
“What tunnel?”
“My father designed the original campus during the Cold War. There’s an emergency conduit from the river pumping station.”
“You know it’s still open?”
“No.”
Maren gave me a cold look.
“Excellent plan.”
“I’m developing it.”
“You have eight hours.”
“I’m aware.”
The landlord’s television showed live footage outside the Whitmore hotel. Federal agents escorted several executives into vehicles.
Tessa and Conrad remained missing.
Then the screen changed.
My face appeared beside the headline:
CEO QUESTIONED IN MEDICAL KIDNAPPING SCANDAL
A reporter announced that sources believed I had stolen confidential records and abducted an infant from an accredited treatment facility.
“They’re making you the kidnapper,” Dr. Shaw said.
On-screen, Daniel Mercer stepped behind a podium.
“Mr. Brooks is considered emotionally unstable and potentially dangerous,” he told reporters. “We urge him to surrender the child immediately.”
Maren stared at me.
“You trusted him.”
“I did.”
“Your instincts are remarkable.”
“I deserve that.”
“No,” she said. “You deserve much worse. But we’re short on time.”
I contacted the only board member who had opposed the Whitmore partnership: my father’s old friend, Gerald Knox.
He answered immediately.
“I wondered when you would call.”
“You knew something was wrong.”
“I suspected financial fraud. Not children.”
“I need schematics for the river pumping station.”
“You’ll have them in ten minutes.”
“And Gerald?”
“Yes?”
“Freeze every Brooks account connected to the Whitmores.”
“That will trigger panic.”
“Good.”
An hour later, we left the basement in two vehicles.
The landlord stayed with the twins. Maren hated leaving them, but taking all three babies into a covert facility was impossible.
Clara traveled with Dr. Shaw in a medical transport van.
Maren rode beside me.
Rain continued falling as we drove north toward the research campus.
For twenty minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then Maren said, “What were their names?”
I glanced at her.
“The children in the photograph.”
“I don’t know.”
“You should.”
“I’ve never seen them.”
“If we’re risking everything to save them, they shouldn’t remain anonymous.”
She was right.
Dr. Shaw had recognized the boy as Mateo’s younger brother, Elias. The girl’s name was Lily Chen. Both had been taken from families through falsified medical emergencies.
I repeated their names.
“Elias and Lily.”
Maren nodded.
“Now they’re real.”
The Brooks campus rose ahead through the rain, a collection of glass buildings surrounded by forest and security fencing.
We parked near the abandoned pumping station two miles east.
Gerald’s schematics showed a maintenance shaft descending beneath the riverbank.
The entrance had been sealed with a steel plate.
I used a cutting tool from the van.
Twenty minutes later, we entered the tunnel.
The air smelled of rust and stagnant water.
Dr. Shaw carried Clara against her chest in a protected sling. Maren carried medical supplies and a flashlight. I led with a metal bar and Gerald’s map.
The tunnel narrowed as we approached the campus.
At one point, we had to crawl beneath collapsed pipes.
Then we reached a concrete wall marked with my father’s initials.
R.B.
Richard Brooks.
I ran my fingers across the letters.
Had he known?
Maren noticed.
“Don’t decide what he was before you know.”
It was the first gentle thing she had said to me.
I broke the old lock.
Beyond the wall stood a mechanical room humming with modern equipment.
The tunnel was still in use.
We climbed a stairwell.
At the top, voices approached.
Maren pulled me behind a bank of generators.
Two guards entered.
“I heard Brooks froze the accounts,” one said.
“Conrad has offshore reserves.”
“What about the kids?”
“Price says prepare all viable subjects for evacuation.”
“All of them?”
“Zurich team changed the route. They’re going through Montreal.”
The guards left.
Dr. Shaw looked horrified.
“They’re moving everyone.”
“We need the control room,” I said.
We followed the corridor and found a security station with one technician inside.
I knocked him unconscious with the metal bar before he could trigger an alarm.
Maren stared at me.
“What?”
“I didn’t know CEOs did that.”
“We attend unusual conferences.”
Dr. Shaw accessed the system.
Camera feeds appeared across six monitors.
White rooms.
Hospital beds.
Children.
Eleven of them.
Some sleeping, some awake, all wearing medical bracelets with numbers instead of names.
Maren covered her mouth.
Then Observation Room Seven appeared.
Elias and Lily sat together beneath harsh lights.
A man entered the room.
Leonard Price.
My chief operating officer.
He crouched in front of the children and spoke gently, as if he were comforting them.
Then he looked directly into the camera.
“I know you’re watching, Rowan.”
Every monitor changed to his face.
“You always were curious,” Leonard continued. “Just like your father.”
I froze.
He smiled.
“Yes. Richard Brooks discovered this facility too.”
Maren looked at me.
Leonard leaned closer to the camera.
“And that is why he died.”
A memory flashed through me.
My father’s car leaving the road on a clear summer night.
The police report.
Brake failure.
An accident I had accepted for eleven years.
Leonard’s smile widened.
“You have six minutes to bring Clara to the central laboratory.”
A door locked behind us.
Red lights began flashing.
Gas hissed from the ceiling vents.
Dr. Shaw grabbed Clara.
May you like
Maren covered her mouth with her sleeve.
And through the sealed glass wall, I saw Leonard Price approaching with a group of armed guards.
