Chapter 4
Back inside room 312, the air felt stifling. Clara slid the door shut, locking it with the small manual latch that the hospital hadn't yet disabled. She returned to the chair beside Maya’s bed, her heart hammering against her ribs as she unfolded the scrap paper with Marcus Vance’s direct extension. The digital clock flickered to 11:45 PM. Waiting until morning was not an option; by morning, the Sterlings would likely have Maya transferred to a private, inaccessible facility under the guise of specialized care.
Leaning forward, Clara gently stroked Maya’s shoulder. The girl stirred, her eyelids fluttering open with a soft groan of discomfort from the neck brace.
"Mom?" Maya whispered, her voice dry and raspy.
"I'm right here, sweetheart," Clara murmured, holding a small plastic cup of water to Maya's lips and helping her take a few cautious sips. "I need to ask you something important, and I need you to think back very carefully. When you and Emily were at the community center before the accident... did anyone approach you? Did Julian say anything unusual?"
Maya’s eyes widened slightly in the dim light, the memory visibly causing her physical distress as she tried to shift her head against the rigid foam brace. "Julian... he was acting weird all afternoon, Mom. He kept looking at his phone, waiting for someone. He said his dad gave him the car keys as a reward for finishing his college prep essays, but... but he didn't drive us straight home."
"Where did he take you?" Clara pressed gently, keeping her voice calm to prevent another panic attack.
"To the old Miller estate on the edge of town," Maya breathed out, her small hands twitching on the blanket. "The abandoned property near the quarry. Julian said he had to drop off a package for his father in the old carriage house. Emily didn't want to go inside, so she stayed in the back seat of the coupe. But when we got there... there were men waiting for us. Men in suits, just like the ones who brought me to the basement earlier."
Clara felt the room spin. The Miller estate was an infamous piece of disputed land that Richard Sterling had been trying to acquire for years to build a massive commercial complex, despite local environmental protests. What did a teenage car crash have to do with real estate development?
"What happened next, Maya?" Clara asked, her voice trembling slightly.
"Julian got out and talked to them," Maya continued, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes again. "One of the men—the tall one with a scar on his cheek—looked into the back window at Emily. He looked... angry. He told Julian that she wasn't supposed to be in the car, that she knew too much about the zoning permits or something. Then Julian panicked. He got back in the driver's seat, slammed on the gas, and sped away from the property like he was running for his life. He was crying, Mom. Julian was screaming that his father was going to kill him. That's when he lost control on Elm Street and hit the utility pole."
The puzzle pieces clicked together with terrifying clarity. It hadn't been a simple reckless driving accident. It was a botched kidnapping or intimidation attempt tied up in corporate corruption, and Julian’s erratic driving had turned it into a lethal smash-up. And Emily... sweet, innocent Emily... had been left behind at that abandoned estate while Julian and Maya took the brunt of the crash.
"Did Emily have her phone with her?" Clara asked urgently.
"Yes," Maya whispered. "Her pink smartphone. She hid it inside the lining of her backpack before we even got out of the house. She said she always kept her location-sharing on with me just in case her parents got too strict."
Clara’s breath caught. Location-sharing. If Emily's phone was still active, or if the last recorded GPS ping was stored in the cloud, Clara wouldn't have to guess where the girl was. She pulled her own phone from her jacket pocket, her thumb hovering over the screen. She needed to access Maya's linked account before the Sterling legal team managed to scrub the cloud data or remotely wipe the devices through the cellular network providers they undoubtedly had in their pocket.
Suddenly, a sharp knock echoed against the heavy wooden door of room 312.
May you like
"Mrs. Vance?" a metallic, amplified voice spoke through the hallway intercom speaker just above the door frame. "Please open the door. Security requires a routine wellness check on the patient."
Clara froze. It wasn't a nurse. It was the security team, likely dispatched by the man in the charcoal suit. Time had run out.
