Elias said. “It protects her long enough for the rest to arrive.”
Before Graham could answer, Elias’s phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
He opened it.
The message contained a photo.
Silas and all eight sons sat inside the hospital chapel. The stained-glass window behind them showed a blue-robed saint with open hands. In the foreground, the Mercers held paper cups of coffee. Nolan was laughing. Pierce had his phone raised. Graham’s scraped hand rested openly on the table.
Beneath the image was one sentence:
“They were relieved the baby was gone.”
Elias felt something inside him go very still.
A second message arrived.
“There is a housekeeper hiding in the hospital. She saw everything. If they find her first, she will disappear before sunrise.”
Elias turned the screen dark and slipped the phone away.
Silas watched him. “Problem?”
“No,” Elias said. “A lead.”
He walked away before the Mercers could decide whether to stop him.
At the elevator, he pressed the down button, waited until the doors opened, stepped inside, and watched the brothers’ reflections in the polished metal. Graham whispered something to Nolan and Pierce. Their bodies shifted.
Elias pressed three, not basement.
The doors closed.
He waited one floor, exited, crossed to the opposite stairwell, and went down fast.
His boots struck concrete in a steady rhythm. On the landing between two and one, he called Rowan again.
“I have a witness,” he said.
“Where?” Rowan asked.
“Hospital basement, maybe laundry. Unknown number is feeding me locations.”
“Charleston PD is eight minutes out. Federal contact is twelve. Hospital security is being notified now.”
“Make it four.”
“I’m trying.”
Elias ended the call and checked the next message.
“Laundry corridor. Blue scarf. She has what Liora gave her.”
The basement corridor smelled of bleach, damp fabric, and old pipes. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A laundry cart sat abandoned near a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Somewhere, machines thumped in a slow mechanical rhythm.
Elias moved quietly, scanning reflections in glass, door handles, blind corners.
“Maribel?” he called softly.
Nothing.
“My name is Elias Vale. I’m Liora’s husband.”
A sound came from behind a row of linen bins. Not a voice. A breath caught too quickly.
He stopped several feet away and lowered his hands where they could be seen.
“I’m not with them.”
A woman crouched between the bins and the wall. She was small, perhaps in her early fifties, with a blue scarf tied over her hair. Her gray housekeeping uniform was wrinkled. One sleeve had been torn near the shoulder. She clutched a phone in one hand so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
“You came,” she whispered.
“I came.”
“They said you wouldn’t matter.”
Elias crouched, keeping distance. “What did you see?”
Maribel looked toward the corridor behind him. “I clean the Mercer house twice a week. Not for them directly. Through an agency. Last night, Mrs. Liora came alone. She was nervous, but she smiled at me. She always smiles at staff. None of them do.”
Her voice shook.
“Her father said there were papers for the baby. Something about a trust. She asked why her husband wasn’t allowed to see them first. They started arguing in the library.”
Elias forced himself to stay quiet.
“I was in the hall with towels. I heard Mr. Silas
