“The fifty thousand dollars cash from the pink suitcase is currently in police evidence,” I stated. “The serial numbers match the withdrawal slips from Arthur Vance’s shell corporation, Vance Logistics LLC, dated three days ago. The fake passport for ‘Chloe Vance’ carrying my daughter’s photograph is in the custody of Homeland Security. And this audio file, along with the full live video feed from this room, is currently being recorded by three detectives sitting in an unmarked van directly outside your lobby.”
Dr. Harrison stood up so violently his chair tipped backward, crashing against the floorboards.
“What is the meaning of this?” Harrison stammered, his hands shaking as he backed away toward the glass wall. “I was told this was an intra-family donor match! I was told the biological father had signed the living-donor clearance!”
“You didn’t care what was signed, Harrison,” I said coldly. “You were getting a two-hundred-thousand-dollar cash cut to perform an illegal organ harvesting on an abducted child under an alias.”
“Shut up!” Sarah shrieked, slamming both palms onto the table. Her controlled facade completely shattered into a rabid, clawing hysteria. “Shut up, David! You ruined everything! Do you know what kind of debt I had? We were going to lose the house anyway! Arthur was going to pay off the entire mortgage! I was saving this family!”
“You were selling my seven-year-old daughter for spare parts,” I said, my voice dropping to a deathly whisper.
Arthur Vance turned toward the door, shouting at his bodyguard. “Get us out of here. Now!”
The bodyguard reached for the conference room door handle and yanked it open.
Standing in the hallway were four uniformed police officers, two plainclothes FBI special agents with badges displayed on their belts, and two armed county sheriffs.
“Federal agents! Nobody move!” the lead agent shouted, stepping into the room with his hand resting on his sidearm. “Hands where we can see them! Step away from the table!”
The bodyguard instantly threw his hands into the air, backing up against the wall.
Arthur Vance closed his eyes, his shoulders sagging in complete, silent defeat. He didn’t say another word; he simply turned around and placed his hands behind his back.
Dr. Harrison began babbling incoherently. “I didn’t know! I only look at the surgical charts! The intake coordinators handle identity verification! I have full immunity provisions in my contract—”
“Save it for the grand jury, Doctor,” a plainclothes detective snapped, pulling Harrison’s arms behind his back and clicking heavy steel handcuffs around his wrists. “You’re being detained for attempted human trafficking, commercial organ harvesting, and criminal conspiracy.”
Sarah didn’t give up so easily.
She lunged across the mahogany table directly at me, her fingernails aimed at my eyes, screaming like a wounded animal. “You ruined my life! You stupid, pathetic bastard, I should have poisoned both of you!”
An FBI agent grabbed her by the collar of her trench coat, yanking her backward off the table. She slipped on the hardwood floor, landing hard on her knees.
The agent twisted her arms behind her back, pinning her against the floor as the steel cuffs snapped tightly around her wrists. Sarah thrash-kicked against the carpet, her styled blonde hair falling wildly across her face, sobbing in a mixture of unbridled rage and helpless terror.
“David, please!” she wailed, looking up from the floor, tears cutting deep tracks through her makeup. “Tell them it’s a mistake! Tell them we can work this out! I did it for us! David!”
I stood up slowly from my chair.
I picked up my smartphone from the table and slipped it back into my jacket pocket. I looked down at the woman who had lived under my roof, who had tucked my children into bed, and who had planned to carve up my little girl for cash.
I didn’t yell. I didn’t smile. I felt no satisfaction, only a profound, icy disgust.
“I don’t know you,” I said quietly.
I turned my back on her screams and walked out of the room, leaving the federal agents to haul the four of them away.
— CHAPTER 4 —
The cold morning air outside the medical building hit my face like an electric shock.
I stood on the sidewalk of Mercer Street, listening to the muffled thud of car doors as federal agents loaded Sarah, Arthur Vance, and Dr. Harrison into unmarked sedans. The clinic’s pristine glass facade looked hollow now. A county health inspector’s vehicle was already pulling up to the curb behind the police cruisers, ready to padlock the building and impound every hard drive and patient ledger inside.
I didn’t watch them drive away. I walked two blocks down to Mark’s parked truck.
When I opened the passenger door, Leo was sitting upright in the back seat, his fingers white-knuckled around his knees. Mia was asleep beside him, wrapped in Mark’s heavy winter jacket, her head resting against the window.
