Chapter 6 - The Girl in Room Nine
The hospital had changed names twice since my mother's disappearance. Elena found a retired nurse willing to speak on the record, provided we met in a public place.
Her name was June Wallace. She wore a lavender cardigan and carried a folder so worn the corners had gone soft.
"Your mother wasn't admitted as Evelyn Bennett," June said. "She was admitted as Jane Miller, with a girl about thirteen."
"I was nineteen," I said. "I was home, waiting for the police to call."
June nodded. "The girl wasn't you."
She slid a photocopied intake sheet across the table. The patient's name had been crossed out, but a handwritten note remained: Room 9. No visitors. Hale security.
"She had a broken wrist," June said. "She kept asking whether her father was coming."
"What happened to her?"
"A man claiming to be her guardian took her away. I called child services. The record vanished the next day."
I looked at Dante. "Salvatore knew."
"Or he wants us to think he did," Dante said.
June touched my hand. "Your mother left something. I kept it because I was afraid she'd never come back."
She produced a photograph: two girls standing on a dock. One was me at ten. The other, younger and dark-haired, held my hand.
I remembered the day. A summer picnic. A girl named Lily who'd stayed with us for a week. My mother said she was a cousin.
"Lily," I whispered.
"Her legal name is Amelia Mercer," June said. "Your father signed the admission papers."
I had a sister. Not a rumor. A person. A child who had once asked me to braid her hair.
Dante watched me carefully. "Do you want to stop?"
"No. I want to find her."
The trail led to a nonprofit youth residence funded by the Hale Foundation. It had closed four years earlier after a fire. One former employee remembered a girl called Mia, who had been moved to a private home outside Milwaukee.
That evening, Cameron sent me a video. A young woman sat in a white room, holding a newspaper with that morning's date. She looked straight into the camera.
"Nora," she said, "please don't come looking for me."
A man's shadow crossed the wall. The video ended.
I played it three times. On the fourth, I noticed her fingers tapping against the chair: three taps, a pause, two taps. Lily and I had invented a code during that summer. Three-two meant help me.
I went to Dante's office. "She's alive. And she's asking for help."
"We don't know where the video was filmed."
"Then find out."
He stood. "We'll work with Elena and law enforcement. But Nora, I need you to understand something. These people know how to use love as bait."
"So do I," I said. "Cameron taught me."
For the first time, Dante didn't look at me as someone fragile. He looked at me as someone who had survived.
An hour later, the forensic team found a reflection in the video: a stained-glass window shaped like a lighthouse. Isabella recognized it from an abandoned retreat property owned by the Hale Foundation.
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The property was called Morning House.
And its address was just forty minutes away.
