Chapter 3 - The Clinic Without a Name
Mark was detained before reaching the parking garage.
He refused to answer questions.
His attorney arrived within thirty minutes.
The speed told me Mark had been prepared for this day.
Dr. Adler contacted the hospital’s surgical chief.
Hailey’s operation was scheduled immediately.
Before they took her upstairs, she caught my hand.
“Mom, don’t leave.”
“I’m staying.”
“Even if Mark says I’m lying?”
“Especially then.”
Her face crumpled.
“I tried to tell you.”
The words broke me.
“When?”
“Last Christmas.”
I remembered that night.
Hailey asked if we could talk privately.
Mark interrupted with a story about work.
Later, he told me she had been complaining because she wanted a more expensive camera.
I believed him.
“I’m sorry.”
She squeezed my fingers.
“Just don’t believe him now.”
The operating-room doors closed behind her.
Detective Nina Brooks met me in the waiting area.
She specialized in crimes involving medical fraud.
She showed me the clinic photograph.
“Do you recognize the building?”
“No.”
“There was no sign.”
“It was surrounded by trees.”
“Mark said it was a sports medicine center.”
The detective searched state medical databases.
No clinic matching Hailey’s description existed.
The photograph contained a partial vehicle plate reflected in a window.
Police traced it to Dr. Elias Voss.
Voss had been a research surgeon at Acheron Biomedical.
His license was suspended after he performed experimental procedures without complete consent.
He disappeared eighteen months ago.
“When was Hailey’s procedure?” Detective Brooks asked.
“Fourteen months ago.”
Voss had supposedly vanished four months before that.
He had continued operating in secret.
My phone rang.
Mark’s name appeared.
The detective told me to answer on speaker.
“Laura,” he said gently.
“I know you’re frightened.”
“Tell me what is inside my daughter.”
“A treatment.”
“For what?”
“A hereditary condition.”
“Hailey does not have a hereditary condition.”
“Her father did.”
My breath stopped.
Mark had never met Hailey’s father.
At least, that was what he told me.
“How would you know anything about David?”
Mark was silent.
May you like
Then he said something that turned my fear into terror.
“Because David helped design the capsule before he died.”
