Chapter 9 - St. Gabriel’s
St. Gabriel’s Children’s Home stood behind rusted gates and a field of dead grass.
The main building was a three-story structure of dark brick, broken windows, and collapsing gutters. A stone angel above the entrance had lost both hands.
Official records described the property as abandoned.
The fresh tire marks said otherwise.
We approached without headlights.
Mara commanded the federal tactical team. I wore body armor without agency markings and carried no firearm.
She had insisted on that condition.
“You are here as a material witness and consultant,” she said.
“I remember the law.”
“You remember ignoring it.”
“I remember which exceptions mattered.”
She almost smiled.
“Stay behind the entry team.”
We entered through a side door at 10:58 p.m.
The building smelled of dust, damp wood, and disinfectant.
That final smell did not belong in an abandoned structure.
The ground floor contained empty classrooms and rotting furniture. Children’s drawings still covered one hallway.
Houses.
Families.
Smiling suns.
Some drawings had black crowns in the corners.
An agent found a concealed elevator behind a pantry wall.
Its controls required a biometric scan.
Mara’s technician bypassed it in four minutes.
The elevator descended farther than expected.
One level.
Two.
Three.
When the doors opened, bright fluorescent light filled the car.
The underground facility was active.
White hallways extended in three directions. Cameras rotated toward us. A warning tone began.
Then a calm male voice spoke through ceiling speakers.
“Arthur.”
Charles Voss.
“You always preferred the direct entrance.”
Mara signaled her teams to spread out.
“Charles Voss,” she announced, “you are the subject of a federal investigation. Surrender immediately.”
“You sound exactly as I taught you, Mara.”
“You taught me to follow evidence.”
“And Arthur taught you to confuse obsession with courage.”
I looked toward the nearest camera.
“Where is Claire?”
Silence.
Then Voss laughed softly.
“Still incapable of beginning with an easy question.”
“Where is my wife?”
“You buried her fifteen years ago.”
“I buried a sealed coffin.”
Mara looked at me.
I had never told anyone.
After the crash, authorities claimed Claire’s injuries were too severe for an open casket. I was discouraged from viewing her again after identification.
I accepted the coffin because Lily needed a funeral.
Because I needed something to bury.
Voss continued.
“You signed the death certificate.”
“I trusted you.”
“Yes.”
The word carried satisfaction.
That was his greatest weapon.
Not money.
Not violence.
Trust.
A door opened at the end of the hallway.
Daniel Kerr stepped into view with his hands raised.
Agents surrounded him.
He wore no jacket. Blood marked his collar.
“Don’t shoot,” he said. “I came to surrender.”
Mara ordered him to his knees.
“Where is Voss?”
“Control room, lower level.”
“Where are the hostages?”
“Medical ward.”
“Rebecca?”
“She’s moving between levels.”
“Claire?” I asked.
Daniel looked at me.
“I don’t know.”
I grabbed his shoulder.
“You told me you gave her the file.”
“I did.”
“Did you help Voss take her?”
“No.”
“Did you know she survived the first crash?”
“Not until years later.”
“How many years?”
“Six.”
“And you did not tell me?”
“I could not confirm it.”
“You saw evidence.”
“I saw a medication order under an alias Claire once used.”
“What alias?”
“Anna Reed.”
Claire used that name when we traveled during our first witness-protection operation.
Only four people knew it.
Me.
Claire.
Daniel.
Voss.
“Where was the medication delivered?” Mara asked.
“Here.”
I released Daniel and moved toward the medical wing.
Mara blocked me.
“Entry team first.”
Every second felt stolen.
Agents cleared the hallway.
Rooms contained hospital beds, monitoring equipment, and locked cabinets filled with sedatives.
Some rooms looked recently occupied.
One contained a wall covered with photographs of my family.
Lily’s school pictures.
Claire in our garden.
Me leaving federal buildings.
Richard and Lily’s wedding.
Recent images of my house.
The Crown had documented us for decades.
A second room contained photographs of Rebecca at different ages.
In early images, she was a thin child with dark hair.
As she grew older, her hair became lighter.
Her teeth were altered.
Her nose had been surgically changed.
Notes beside the photographs described speech patterns, posture, family history, and emotional triggers.
She had not simply been trained.
She had been reconstructed.
One medical file listed her original name.
SUBJECT R-7.
No birth name.
No parents.
No history before age five.
“She was not Claire’s baby,” Mara said.
“Not necessarily.”
“The earliest record is five years after the crash.”
“Then the file may be incomplete.”
Daniel stood behind the agents.
“Voss wanted her to believe she was your daughter.”
“Why?” I asked.
“To control the Mercer authentication system.”
“The system requires biometrics.”
“And close-family genetic markers can bypass certain emergency safeguards.”
I turned toward him.
“You helped design that exception.”
“So did you.”
It had been created in case an agent was incapacitated and a family member needed to activate protection.
Voss had spent years manufacturing someone who could exploit it.
“Did Rebecca know?” Mara asked.
“Not at first. She believed the story.”
“And now?”
“Now she knows enough to hate everyone.”
Gunfire erupted from the lower corridor.
Agents pushed us into cover.
A voice shouted that the hostages had been located.
Judge Bell and the twins’ father were alive but restrained inside a treatment room.
The twins were not present.
Their father admitted he gave the blue egg to Daniel during the Easter party.
Daniel looked at us.
“I never received it.”
The father insisted.
“A man approached me near the garden. He said Daniel sent him. He knew the code phrase.”
“What phrase?” Mara asked.
“The last crown falls inward.”
Daniel went pale.
“That phrase was used by only three Sentinel commanders.”
“Who?” I asked.
“You, Voss, and Mara.”
The agents looked toward her.
Mara’s expression hardened.
“I never spoke to him.”
The internal leak had used her credential.
Now someone had used a phrase known to her.
Evidence was slowly being arranged to point in Mara’s direction.
Voss’s voice returned through the speakers.
“Trust is exhausting, isn’t it?”
Mara raised her radio.
“Locate the control room.”
The lights went out.
Emergency red lamps activated.
A heavy door sealed behind us.
Smoke began entering the hallway through the ventilation system.
“Not smoke,” Daniel said. “Gas.”
Agents pulled masks over their faces.
I had none.
Mara gave me hers.
“Take it.”
“You need it.”
“I have another in my vest.”
She did not.
I recognized the lie.
Before I could argue, a figure appeared through the red haze.
Rebecca.
She wore a respirator and held the gold Easter egg.
She pointed toward a maintenance door.
“This way.”
Agents hesitated.
“Move!” she shouted. “The gas is a paralytic.”
We followed her into a service tunnel and sealed the door.
Mara coughed but remained standing.
Rebecca removed her respirator and handed it to her.
“You should not have given yours away.”
Mara studied her face.
“Where is Sophie’s drive?”
“Voss took it.”
“Where are the others?”
“He has four. I have the gold fragment. The reporter has purple.”
“Then he still cannot open the registry.”
“That is why he needs me.”
Rebecca looked at me.
“And you.”
I stepped closer.
“Are you my daughter?”
Her expression broke for the first time.
“I don’t know.”
That answer sounded more honest than every certainty she had offered before.
“Did you shoot at Lily?”
“No.”
“Did you kidnap Sophie?”
“I took her before Voss’s team arrived. I knew the foundation was monitored. It was the only way to show you I was alive.”
“You could have contacted me.”
“I tried six years ago.”
“How?”
“I sent a letter to your house.”
“I never received it.”
“Daniel intercepted it.”
I looked at him.
Daniel did not deny it.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the letter contained activation phrases. I thought Voss was using her.”
“He was,” Rebecca said. “But I was asking for help.”
Daniel lowered his eyes.
The cost of suspicion stood between us.
A door opened at the far end of the tunnel.
Voss appeared behind bullet-resistant glass.
He looked exactly as he had during the television interview.
Calm.
Elegant.
Untouched by the chaos around him.
In one hand, he held Claire’s wedding ring.
In the other, he held a medical file.
“Come alone, Arthur,” he said through the intercom. “And I will show you which daughter survived.”
Rebecca moved beside me.
“I am going too.”
Voss smiled.
“That is the point.”
The glass door unlocked.
Mara raised her weapon.
“It is a trap.”
“Of course it is,” I said.
I looked at Rebecca.
“Stay behind me.”
Her eyes filled with something that resembled grief.
“You said that to Lily in the old family videos.”
“I say it to people I intend to protect.”
We entered the corridor together.
Behind us, the door locked.
Ahead, Charles Voss held the truth about Claire.
May you like
And somewhere deeper in the facility, a woman began singing the lullaby my wife used to sing to Lily.
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