Page 94 of Girl Lost
“So Stryker just randomly told you we’re your biological parents?” Corbin shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it wasn’t random. I started noticing things weren’t right here, you know? Restricted areas I couldn’t access, charts for patients who didn’t exist. Men in black who’d come and go through secured entrances.” Summer glanced toward the door. “At first I thought it might be insurance fraud or money laundering or something. But then I realized Dr. Forest was performing all these heart transplants with no paper trail.”
“Did you tell anyone? Call the police?” Luna asked.
“I went to Stryker. I knew he used to be a cop and he runs that Kingdom MMA Gym where he trains law enforcement. I figured he’d know what to do.” Summer fidgeted with the tissue in her hands. “He promised to look into it.”
“That’s when things got weird,” Trinity interjected. “He started acting all paranoid.”
“I’ve been worried about him ever since I saw him at the grocery store a few weeks ago. I was going to say hello and I wanted to see how Trinity was doing, but there was this man watching him. I recognized him from here. He followed Stryker to his car, and I thought that was weird.”
“What did you do?” Corbin pressed.
“The man got into a dark SUV and followed Stryker out of the parking lot. I hurried to my car and followed them. Not closely. I didn’t want them to see me, but I ended up losing them at a light,” Summer said. “I waited until Stryker’s car was back at the gym, then I ... I left him a note under his windshield.”
“This note?” Luna pulled out her phone and showed them the photo she’d taken of the note.
They’re watching. Don’t trustanyone.
Summer said, “Yeah, that’s it.”
Corbin asked Luna, “When did you see the note?”
“I dropped by Stryker’s after I left you at the diner. He’d offered to let me stay with him, so I didn’t see the harm in poking around. I found it tucked in his Bible.”
“The day before I left the note, he pulled me aside here at the clinic.” Her gaze moved between Luna and Corbin. “Said he’d discovered something while investigating. He was planning to expose it all, but first he needed to tell me something important. That he’d known my parents for a long time and known how hard they’d tried to conceive their own child.” Summer exhaled and continued. “He said he’d been the one to place me with my parents. And their connection to the research center, well, he thought they might beinvolved in something illegal. I just remember he mentioned the Nexus Initiative.”
Luna’s eyes widened. “Did he say why he decided to tell you then? After all this time?”
“He said ...” Summer hesitated. “He said if anything happened to him, I needed to know the truth. That my biological parents were good people who might be the only ones who could stop what was happening here.”
Corbin felt a chill. It was all connected. The kidnapping, Chiron, the girls in the graveyard, Trinity. The bioengineered transplant had most likely saved her life, but it could also end it. Paternal protectiveness roared up inside of him.
His eyes slid to her in the hospital bed. She looked pale, her breathing shallow. Her hand pressed into her chest. Her symptoms mirrored the ones he’d been faking. “You okay?”
“My heart,” Trinity said in a strained whisper. “It’s ... it’s racing.”
He exchanged a look with Luna. This wasn’t good. They had to get Trinity out of here. To a real doctor in a real hospital. “I think we’re going to need that chopper after all.”
“The sooner the better,” Luna said.
“Blade, do you copy? We need immediate extraction. Clear skies ahead.” He covered his earpiece with his hand, listening.
Silence.
“Blade? Do you copy?” He checked his phone again. “No connection. What about you?”
Luna shook her head. “Nothing. The comms aren’t working down here.”
“We’re too deep underground,” Summer said. “No cell signal. No radio frequencies. They might even have jammers as a security precaution.”
“Then how do we get out of here?” His frustration simmered, threatening to boil over.
“Everything down here runs on a private mesh network,” Summer explained, her fingers flying over the tablet. “It’s designed to becompletely isolated from the outside world. I can’t get access with this either.” She flipped the tablet, showing Corbin the red error message flashing on the display.
“We’re trapped,” Trinity said.
“Not yet,” Summer said. “I know a way out. But we have to hurry.”
