Chapter 5 - The Locked Floor
A nurse took Eleanor to her suite. Adrian followed, and I followed him.
We found her alone in a room decorated with family portraits and fresh lilies. Her nurse had gone for water, leaving a wheelchair parked beside an open window.
"You shouldn't have said anything downstairs," Adrian told her gently.
Eleanor struck the armrest with her palm. "I should have said it two years ago."
Her voice broke on the last word.
"What did you see?" I asked.
"Accounts. Names. A hospital built on paper. Daniel told me there were children listed as patients who never existed."
Adrian's forehead creased. "The Willowbrook pediatric wing?"
Eleanor nodded.
"We opened that wing," he said. "I cut the ribbon."
"The building was real," I said. "The patients were not. Dad discovered invoices for equipment nobody purchased."
Eleanor gripped a folded handkerchief. "He tried to tell your grandfather, Adrian. Elliot intercepted him. The next day Daniel was gone."
Adrian stood very still, then asked the only reasonable question. "Why didn't you tell the police?"
"I did. Elliot brought a doctor to say my stroke had affected my memory. Then he threatened to move me to a care home."
I wanted to be angry with her. I was angry. Yet her hands trembled so badly she couldn't unfold her own handkerchief.
"Locker 417," I said.
She looked at me sharply.
"The old archive," she whispered. "The floor your grandfather sealed after the flood."
Adrian retrieved a floor plan from his phone. The basement showed a mechanical room where the archive should have been.
"They renovated it," he said.
"They built a wall," Eleanor replied.
A thud came from the hallway. Then another. Adrian opened the door and found the nurse slumped against a console, breathing but unconscious.
"Call 911," I said.
A black-gloved hand reached around the corner and grabbed Adrian's arm. He broke free, but the person ran toward the private elevator. I caught one detail: a silver watch band engraved with three tiny stars.
Adrian rushed to the nurse as I called emergency services.
On the carpet lay a prescription bottle without a label and a torn scrap of paper.
May you like
I picked up the paper with a tissue. It held one typed instruction.
REMOVE THE WITNESS BEFORE SHE REMEMBERS MORE.
