Chapter 9 - The Woman at Mill Creek
David reached the hospital twenty minutes after the ambulance.
Police tried to stop him from entering the emergency department.
Morales finally pulled strings.
“Five minutes,” she warned.
The woman from Mill Creek was not Sarah.
David knew it instantly.
For half a second, disappointment crushed him.
Then he recognized her.
Linda Avery.
The nurse.
Burn marks covered one arm.
Smoke darkened her face.
She looked at David and began crying.
“I’m sorry.”
David sat beside the bed.
“Where is Sarah?”
Linda closed her eyes.
“Dead.”
The word hurt just as much the second time.
“When?”
“Eighteen months ago.”
“Where?”
“Mill Creek.”
“How?”
“Kessler.”
David looked away.
Linda forced herself to continue.
“He believed Sarah had copied documents proving your father had used company money to support him and cover illegal medical activities.”
“What activities?”
“Kessler had been prescribing controlled medication under false patient identities. He was also taking payments to alter medical records.”
David’s stomach twisted.
“Sarah found it?”
“She found enough.”
“Why take her alive?”
“He wanted to know where she put the evidence.”
David remembered the wall.
“He tortured her?”
Linda’s silence answered.
David stood.
Morales quietly said, “David.”
He sat again.
Linda cried.
“I was there only once after the hospital transfer. Sarah was awake. She was weak, but she fought him.”
“What did she say?”
Linda looked directly into his eyes.
“She said you would find her.”
David covered his mouth.
“She believed you would know something was wrong.”
His chest collapsed inward.
“I didn’t.”
“You were told she was dead.”
“I should have known.”
“No one would have known.”
David stared at the floor.
“What happened after that?”
“Kessler kept asking where she hid the evidence.”
“Did she tell him?”
“No.”
A tiny smile touched Linda’s bruised face.
“She told him to go to hell.”
David almost laughed through his tears.
That sounded like Sarah.
“She died two days later.”
“From what?”
“Kessler gave her an injection.”
David’s eyes lifted.
“What injection?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me see.”
“And her body?”
Linda trembled.
“He moved it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
David frowned.
“Then who is buried in Sarah’s grave?”
Linda’s expression terrified him.
“I don’t know that either.”
Morales stepped closer.
“Why did you go back to Mill Creek tonight?”
“Kessler called me.”
“Why?”
“He said he knew I had written the letter.”
“How?”
Linda stared at her.
“There’s someone inside your department helping him.”
Morales’s face hardened.
“A cop?”
“I don’t know.”
“He tried to kill you in the fire?”
Linda nodded.
“He locked me in an office.”
“How did you escape?”
“Window.”
David asked, “Where is Kessler?”
“He left before he started the fire.”
“Where was he going?”
Linda hesitated.
“He said he finally understood where Sarah hid what he wanted.”
David’s heart stopped.
“The wall.”
Linda nodded.
“He said, ‘That stupid little boy showed me.’”
David shot to his feet.
Ethan.
He grabbed his phone.
His mother answered after three rings.
“David?”
“Where’s Ethan?”
“He’s upstairs sleeping.”
“Take him outside now.”
“What?”
“Mom, listen to me. Pick him up and leave the house.”
Then David heard glass break through the phone.
May you like
Margaret screamed.
The line went dead.
