Chapter 12 - Black Hollow
I did not tell Wyatt immediately.
I knew what he would do.
He would abandon the Black Hollow raid and return for Claire.
That was exactly what David wanted.
Instead, I handed the phone to Agent Ellis’s deputy and kept David talking.
“You cannot raise a baby while hiding from federal agents.”
“I don’t intend to hide forever.”
“You think the Mercer name will protect you after everything comes out?”
“The Mercer name has survived worse.”
Claire cried out in the background.
My control nearly broke.
“Let me speak to her.”
David sighed.
“Anna, don’t bring the baby,” Claire said quickly. “He’s in the—”
The line cut off.
“Where?” I demanded.
David returned.
“She talks too much.”
“If you hurt her—”
“You’ll do what? Testify? Cry on television? You still don’t understand power.”
His arrogance helped us.
Every extra second allowed agents to trace fragments of the call.
“Your father is in custody,” I said. “Judge Keller is talking. Dr. Ward is alive.”
Silence.
That was the first fact that frightened him.
“She survived?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“She told us about my mother, Rachel, Michael, and the clinic.”
David’s breathing changed.
“Did she tell you where Michael is?”
I looked toward the agents.
Mara’s deputy wrote a note.
HE DOESN’T KNOW.
David had threatened us to keep Wyatt away from Black Hollow because he feared Michael might be found there.
Not because he knew.
“I know where my brother is,” I lied.
“Then you know he isn’t worth saving.”
“He knows what you did.”
“He barely knows his own name.”
The trace strengthened.
Agents identified a cell tower near the river district.
“Bring the baby to Pier Nineteen,” David said. “Midnight. No police.”
He ended the call.
Pier Nineteen contained six abandoned shipping buildings.
The agents prepared surveillance.
This time, I did not try to go alone.
I remained inside a mobile command vehicle while a female agent carried a weighted infant carrier toward the pier.
Cameras showed no movement.
Midnight passed.
Then 12:05.
12:10.
A phone rang inside the carrier.
The agent answered.
David laughed through the speaker.
“You thought I wouldn’t recognize a stranger carrying my own son?”
An explosion destroyed the empty warehouse beside her.
The blast threw the agent to the ground.
It was a diversion.
Inside the hospital, alarms began sounding.
Security cameras showed a man in paramedic clothing entering the neonatal floor.
David was going after Michael Ethan.
I ran from the command vehicle before anyone could stop me.
Agent Ellis’s deputy shouted my name.
I climbed into the nearest federal SUV.
An agent drove while I called the hospital.
No one answered on the NICU floor.
When we arrived, smoke filled the main lobby.
The fire alarm had triggered an evacuation.
Parents, nurses, and patients crowded the sidewalks.
I pushed through them.
“My baby is upstairs!”
A security guard tried to stop me.
The agent displayed her badge.
We entered through a service stairwell.
On the neonatal floor, incubators were being moved toward protected elevators.
Michael Ethan’s station was empty.
The nurse who had cared for him lay unconscious near the medication room.
A message was written across the glass wall in red marker.
BLACK HOLLOW WAS NEVER ABOUT MICHAEL.
My phone rang.
Wyatt.
“We found the facility,” he said. “There are cells underground.”
“Is Michael there?”
“No. But we found records showing he was moved last week.”
“David took the baby.”
Wyatt went silent.
“Where are you?”
“At the hospital.”
“Stay with Ellis.”
“Claire is missing too.”
A siren screamed behind him.
Then gunfire.
“Wyatt?”
“Someone knew we were coming.”
The connection broke.
At the same moment, the hospital lights failed.
A man emerged from the dark corridor carrying my son’s incubator.
He wore paramedic clothing and a mask.
I ran toward him.
He abandoned the incubator and drew a gun.
The federal agent fired first.
The man fell.
I reached the incubator.
Michael Ethan was inside.
Alive.
The kidnapper had been another decoy.
Taped beneath the incubator was a phone displaying a live video.
Claire sat in a vehicle beside David.
Across from them was a thin, bearded man with gray streaks in his hair.
His wrists were chained.
I recognized his eyes.
Michael.
My brother was alive.
David leaned toward the camera.
“Now I have every surviving member of Daniel Mercer’s bloodline.”
He turned the phone so I could see the vehicle moving along a mountain road.
“Tell Wyatt that Black Hollow was only the entrance.”
The video ended.
A text appeared with coordinates.
Agent Ellis arrived minutes later, bleeding from a cut on her forehead.
“The Black Hollow team was attacked from underground tunnels,” she said. “Several agents are injured.”
“Wyatt?”
“Alive. He found a passage leading north.”
I showed her the coordinates.
She entered them into a map.
“They lead to Mercer Dam.”
The dam controlled a reservoir above three small towns.
Beneath it lay an abandoned Cold War shelter owned by Mercer Development.
Mara looked at the recovered records.
“Charles built a private server facility under the dam. If David has Michael there, he may be trying to force him to authorize the trust transfer.”
“What happens after he gets the signature?”
Mara studied the map.
“He eliminates every witness.”
I looked down at my newborn son.
Then at the coordinates.
For years, David had relied on my fear.
He believed motherhood would make me easier to control.
May you like
He was wrong.
Motherhood had finally shown me exactly what I was willing to fight for.
