Chapter 10 - The Girl Who Remembered His Face
Every weapon outside the church pointed toward Voss’s car.
He did not care.
A dead man could still pull a trigger.
Sophia sat rigid beside him. Her rain-soaked dress had been replaced by clean clothes, but a bruise darkened one side of her face.
Teresa screamed from behind the barricade.
Voss pressed the gun closer to the child’s temple.
“Send Rebecca out,” he said.
Matteo’s mother stood inside the church entrance.
“No,” Matteo whispered from the gurney behind us.
He had awakened minutes earlier, pale from blood loss and barely able to lift his head.
Voss saw him through the doorway.
“Hello, brother.”
Matteo tried to rise.
Mercer forced him down.
“You will tear the sutures.”
“My mother cannot go out there.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“You took bullets meant for me.”
“You gave me life. We are even.”
“No mother is ever even with her child.”
Voss laughed from the car.
“How touching. Send her now.”
I stepped beyond the barricade with my hands visible.
“You wanted the archive drive.”
“I have the drive.”
“You wanted my father.”
“He is dead.”
“Then what do you want?”
Voss looked toward the church.
“The microfilm.”
Claire whispered behind me, “He does not know we copied it.”
Good.
“We exchange it for Sophia,” I said.
“Rebecca brings it.”
“No.”
His finger tightened on the trigger.
Sophia closed her eyes.
“Wait.”
Rebecca walked past me.
Matteo shouted.
She did not turn back.
She carried the original bracelet in one hand.
Voss opened the rear door.
“Closer.”
Rebecca approached the vehicle.
Federal agents spread along the rooftops, but no one had a clean shot.
Sophia sat between Voss and the open door.
Rebecca stopped six feet away.
“Let the girl walk to me.”
“The bracelet first.”
“You always demanded payment before proving the product was alive,” she said.
Voss’s expression changed.
“Do not speak to me like him.”
“Like Salvatore?”
“You chose him.”
“I feared him.”
“You left me with strangers.”
“I hid you from a man who would have killed you.”
“You hid Matteo too.”
“I failed Matteo.”
Her voice broke.
“But I will not fail another child.”
She threw the bracelet beneath the car.
Voss looked down instinctively.
Sophia moved.
The little girl slammed her heel onto his foot, ducked beneath his arm, and threw herself through the open door.
Rebecca caught her.
A sniper fired.
The bullet struck Voss’s driver.
The car lurched forward.
Voss grabbed Rebecca’s coat.
I reached the vehicle and pulled Sophia free while Anthony fired through the rear window.
Voss released Rebecca and crawled toward the front seat.
The car accelerated through the barricade, struck a police cruiser, and disappeared down the side street.
Agents followed.
Rebecca collapsed beside me.
Blood covered her coat.
For one terrible second, I thought she had been shot.
Then Sophia lifted her hand.
She was holding a small scalpel.
“I cut him,” she said.
A smear of Voss’s blood marked the blade.
Claire took it carefully.
“DNA.”
Sophia looked at me.
“He was the man behind the trash shed.”
“You saw him?”
She nodded.
“He put on a mask after I screamed.”
Voss himself had placed my son inside the bag.
He had not entrusted the act to an assistant.
He wanted to be certain the child disappeared.
“Why did he take you?” I asked.
Sophia pointed toward her shoe.
“There is something inside.”
Teresa rushed forward and embraced her daughter.
Inside the heel of Sophia’s shoe was a folded piece of paper.
A nurse at the safe house had hidden it there before Voss’s men attacked.
The paper contained an address near Albany and a time.
Midnight.
Below it was a message.
One child remains. Mother alive. Voss plans transfer.
The missing infant’s mother was still alive.
We moved before sunset.
Federal agents wanted to raid the maternity home immediately, but Natalie Cho objected.
“If Voss sees law enforcement, he kills the evidence and moves the child.”
She had changed since seeing her son.
The prosecutor remained, but the mother now stood in front of her.
She looked at me.
“You know how men like him think.”
“I was raised by one.”
“Then tell me what he expects.”
“He expects us to attack before midnight.”
“So we wait?”
“No. We let him see the attack he expects.”
The plan used three teams.
Federal agents approached from the highway in marked vehicles.
Anthony’s men created a disturbance near the front gate.
Claire and Natalie entered through an old storm tunnel shown on Elena’s map.
I went beneath the building with Valentina.
Matteo demanded to come.
Mercer refused.
Rebecca stayed beside him and the rescued children at the church.
Before I left, Sophia gave me the scalpel.
“For protection.”
I accepted it.
“You are the bravest person in this family.”
“I’m not family.”
“You saved my son. That makes you family.”
Her smile lasted only a second.
Then she became serious.
“Bring the other baby back.”
The maternity home stood among dead trees, its windows boarded and roof sagging. From the road, it looked abandoned.
Below ground, generators hummed.
Valentina and I crawled through the drainage tunnel until we reached a rusted grate.
Voices sounded beyond it.
Voss.
And a woman.
“You promised she would be safe,” the woman said.
“She will be, once the transfer is complete.”
“Where are the other babies?”
“Gone.”
“You killed them?”
“Dominic took them.”
The woman began crying.
Valentina touched my arm.
We loosened the grate and entered a storage room.
Through the wall vent, we saw Voss standing beside a surgical bed.
A woman lay strapped to it.
She appeared weak, perhaps thirty years old, with an IV line in her arm.
Beside her stood an incubator containing a newborn boy.
The eighth child.
Voss checked his watch.
“The buyers arrive in twenty minutes.”
The woman struggled against the restraints.
“You said my baby died.”
“He did, according to every legal record.”
“Please.”
Voss leaned close to her.
“You should be grateful. Your child’s genetic profile is extremely valuable.”
Valentina covered her mouth.
The woman saw movement behind the vent.
Her eyes met ours.
She did not react.
Instead, she began screaming.
Voss turned toward her.
While his back was turned, Valentina slipped into the room.
She moved toward the incubator.
I followed with the scalpel in one hand and a stolen pistol in the other.
Voss faced us before we crossed half the distance.
He smiled.
“I knew you would choose the tunnel.”
Armed men emerged from both doors.
The woman on the bed stopped struggling.
Her tears disappeared.
Voss released her restraints.
She stood.
Not a prisoner.
An actress.
The incubator was empty.
Voss lifted a remote.
“The final child is somewhere else.”
He looked at Valentina.
“And you are going to tell me where Elena’s evidence is, or I will introduce Dominic to the daughter he never knew he had.”
A monitor turned on.
It showed a girl approximately five years old, sleeping in a locked room.
Around her wrist was a St. Helena bracelet.
The patient name read:
Baby Moretti.
Valentina looked at me in horror.
May you like
Voss smiled.
“Your first child did not die in miscarriage.”
