Chapter 5 - THE HOSPITAL BRACELET
Take care of the boy tonight.
The words burned into Mark’s retinas. Panic, cold and sharp, flooded his veins. He looked up at Leo, who was blissfully laughing at a cartoon dog on the television. His son. His only true flesh and blood. Lorena hadn't just neglected Leo; she viewed him as a loose end. A threat to whatever inheritance she and Thomas were plotting to steal.
Mark grabbed his own phone and dialed the front desk. "This is Room 412. I need you to flag my room. No one comes up. No visitors, no room service, nobody. If anyone asks for me, call the police."
He didn't wait for an answer before hanging up. He paced the floor, staring at the burner phone. He needed to know how deep the rot went. He scrolled up through the message history with "T." Most of it was encrypted nonsense—dates, times, dollar amounts.
But one message from two months ago stood out.
Lorena: The trust requires Mark's signature for the final transfer. If he finds out about St. Jude's, it's over.
T: Keep him distracted. I'm handling the St. Jude's problem.
St. Jude's. Mark racked his brain. Was it a charity? A hospital?
He looked at Leo's duffel bag again. It was a veritable treasure trove of Lorena's discarded secrets. If she was trying to frame Leo for stealing her expensive coat, she had been careless. Mark picked up the heavy cashmere coat once more, inspecting every inch.
He reached into the left pocket. Empty. The inner lining. Nothing.
Then, he noticed a tiny, almost invisible zipper hidden along the inside collar. He unzipped it.
Inside was a thin, folded piece of plastic. Mark pulled it out and smoothed it flat on the hotel desk.
It was a hospital identification bracelet. It was yellowed with age, the cheap plastic brittle and cracking. Mark squinted at the faded thermal printing.
Patient: Evans, Rachel.
Date: September 12, 2015.
Facility: St. Jude's Behavioral Health Center.
Mark felt the floor drop out from under him. September 12th was two days before Rachel died. She hadn't told him she was going to a psychiatric ward. She had told him she was visiting her mother in Ohio.
Why was she at a psychiatric ward? And why did Lorena have the admission bracelet?
"Dad?"
Mark snapped his head up. Leo was standing by the window, peering through the slight crack in the heavy blackout curtains. The boy's face was pale.
"What is it, Leo?" Mark asked, moving quickly to his son's side.
Leo pointed a trembling finger down at the street below. "That car. The black SUV. It's been circling the block since we got here. It just parked across the street."
Mark peered through the gap. Down on the rain-slicked pavement, a black Cadillac Escalade sat idling under a broken streetlamp. The tinted windows hid the driver, but Mark didn't need to see the face. He knew that car. He had co-signed the lease for it.
It was Thomas's SUV.
Thomas had found them.
"Get your shoes on, Leo," Mark ordered, his voice terrifyingly calm. "We're leaving through the service elevator."
As Leo scrambled to grab his sneakers, Mark looked back out the window. The driver's side door of the SUV opened. A tall figure stepped out into the rain, pulling up the collar of a dark jacket.
But as the man stepped under the glow of the streetlamp, Mark's breath hitched.
May you like
It wasn't Thomas.
The man looking up at their hotel window was Mark's older brother, David—the man who had supposedly died in a boating accident five years ago.
