Chapter 8 - THE DOCTOR WHO WAS NEVER JUST A DOCTOR
Dr. Elaine Brooks stopped in the doorway.
Gideon stared at her.
“My daughter?”
Margaret smiled.
“Mine.”
Elaine’s face tightened.
“Do not call me that.”
Sage hid behind Mara.
Gideon remembered every moment of the previous forty-eight hours.
Elaine comforting Sage.
Elaine examining her after the party.
Elaine sitting outside the bedroom.
Elaine telling Gideon trauma required patience.
All while carrying a relationship to Margaret no one knew existed.
“You took the locket.”
Elaine looked at him.
“Yes.”
“You entered Sage’s room.”
“Yes.”
“Using Mara’s code.”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Elaine removed a gray glove from her coat pocket.
Sage gasped.
“The gray man.”
Elaine looked toward the child.
“I’m sorry.”
Gideon stepped forward.
“You terrified my daughter.”
“I didn’t touch her.”
“You entered her room in disguise.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To remove the fake locket before Victor found it.”
Mara stared.
“You knew it was fake.”
“I recognized Helena’s work.”
Gideon’s anger sharpened.
“How?”
Elaine looked toward Margaret.
“Because Helena was my sister-in-law.”
Gideon frowned.
Margaret had two sons.
Conrad and Malcolm.
No daughters.
Then he remembered Margaret calling Elaine her daughter.
Not necessarily biological.
Elaine continued.
“I was married to Victor Sloane.”
Silence.
Daniel whispered:
“Victor’s wife died.”
Elaine looked at him.
“That was the story.”
Gideon laughed bitterly.
“No one in this family stays dead correctly.”
Elaine ignored him.
Twenty years earlier, she married Victor when he worked as a Kessler security contractor.
She believed he protected the family.
Over time, she discovered what protection meant.
Threats.
Surveillance.
Bribery.
Property seizures.
Victor worshiped Margaret’s idea of loyalty.
When Helena began investigating the Rowan trust, Elaine tried warning her.
Victor discovered it.
Elaine ran.
Margaret arranged a new identity under the condition that Elaine disappear completely.
“Why help you?” Mara asked.
Margaret answered.
“Because even I believed Victor had become dangerous.”
Elaine laughed bitterly.
“You created him.”
Margaret’s face hardened.
Elaine continued.
“I became Elaine Brooks.”
“Medical school.”
“Pediatrics.”
“I stayed away.”
“Until Sage entered the system.”
Mara stared.
“You treated her at Cedar Haven.”
“Yes.”
“You knew who she was.”
“Eventually.”
“And you didn’t contact me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Your phone was being monitored.”
Mara closed her eyes.
Again.
Always monitored.
Always intercepted.
Elaine looked at Gideon.
“When I learned Sage had reached Ashcombe, I volunteered through the private pediatric network.”
“You volunteered?”
“Owen called your usual physician.”
“He was unavailable.”
“Because I made sure he was.”
Owen stepped forward.
“So you manipulated access.”
“Yes.”
“To protect her?”
“To observe.”
Gideon’s expression hardened.
“There is a difference.”
“I know.”
Elaine looked ashamed.
“I needed to know whether Gideon was safe.”
Mara nodded slowly.
“That was my question too.”
Gideon almost laughed.
“I am apparently the last person to learn whether I’m trustworthy.”
Sage tugged his hand.
“I trust you.”
He looked down.
Everything softened for one second.
“Thank you.”
Margaret rolled her eyes.
“Sentiment ruins judgment.”
Mara turned on her.
“No.”
“Sentiment is why that child still knows how to love anyone after what you did.”
Margaret’s face turned cold.
Gideon asked Elaine:
“Where is Victor?”
“I don’t know.”
“Margaret says he was at Ashcombe.”
“I believe her.”
“What does he want?”
“The real locket.”
“He didn’t get it.”
“No.”
“Then?”
Elaine looked at Sage.
“He will try again.”
Gideon’s phone vibrated.
He had brought a clean device with one number.
Owen.
Yet the incoming message showed no caller ID.
One photograph appeared.
Ashcombe Manor.
Taken from inside Sage’s bedroom.
The bed was empty.
The suitcase was gone.
Gideon frowned.
Sage stood beside him.
So why steal the suitcase?
Another image.
The suitcase opened on a table.
Its lining cut apart.
Nothing inside.
Then text:
WRONG BAG.
MARA KNOWS WHERE HELENA HID THE JOURNAL.
Mara went white.
Gideon looked at her.
“What journal?”
She said nothing.
“Mara.”
“I don’t have it.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
She exhaled.
“Helena kept a handwritten journal.”
“About the Rowan trust?”
“About everything.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Victor thinks you do.”
“Yes.”
Margaret suddenly laughed.
Everyone turned.
“What?” Gideon asked.
She looked at Mara.
“You really never figured it out?”
Mara stared.
“The journal was never meant for you.”
“Who?”
Margaret’s eyes moved toward Sage.
The room went still.
“No,” Mara whispered.
Margaret smiled.
“Helena always liked theatrical contingencies.”
Gideon crouched beside Sage.
“Did your mother ever give you a book?”
Sage shook her head.
“A notebook?”
“No.”
“Anything from Helena?”
She thought.
Then nodded.
“Grandma’s stories.”
Mara frowned.
“What stories?”
Sage looked at her.
“The ones you read before bed.”
Mara froze.
Gideon noticed.
“What?”
Mara whispered:
“The blue book.”
She had owned it since childhood.
A collection of fairy tales with a cracked blue cover.
Helena gave it to her when Mara was fifteen.
Mara had carried it through every move.
Then when Sage turned four, she began reading it to her.
“Where is it?”
Mara’s face drained.
“With Sage’s things.”
“At the group home?”
“No.”
“Where?”
Sage answered:
“Daddy’s house.”
Everyone froze.
“The suitcase?”
“No.”
Sage pointed toward her battered gray case in Gideon’s memory.
“There’s a zipper under the bottom.”
A hidden compartment.
Gideon called Ashcombe.
No answer.
Owen tried another secure line.
Nothing.
Daniel checked external cameras remotely.
Every camera went black simultaneously.
“Power failure.”
Owen swore.
“No.”
“Manual security override.”
Gideon looked at Margaret.
“Victor.”
She smiled faintly.
“Probably.”
They drove back immediately.
Ashcombe stood dark beneath the winter sky.
No gate lights.
No staff outside.
The front doors were open.
Inside, furniture had been overturned.
Security stations empty.
Owen found two guards alive but sedated.
Not shot.
Victor had wanted silence.
Not a massacre.
They reached Sage’s room.
The gray suitcase lay on the floor.
Cut open.
The hidden compartment empty.
Mara stopped.
“No.”
Gideon looked at her.
“The book?”
“Gone.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Slow applause.
A man stepped from the shadows.
Sixty.
Tall.
Silver hair.
Burn scar across one hand.
Victor Sloane.
He held the blue book.
“Helena really did make everything unnecessarily dramatic.”
Owen raised his weapon.
Victor smiled.
“I wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
Victor looked toward the nursery monitor.
The screen turned on.
A live image appeared.
Celeste Vane—the woman in red—sat tied to a chair inside the old east nursery.
A device rested beneath the crib.
Wires.
Timer.
04:58.
Gideon’s face hardened.
Victor smiled.
“You have five minutes.”
“Give me the locket.”
Mara stared.
“You already have the journal.”
Victor looked at the blue book.
“No.”
He opened it.
Every page was ordinary.
“Because Helena removed the only page I need.”
Gideon looked at Sage.
Victor did too.
May you like
Then he smiled.
“And I think your daughter knows exactly where it is.”
