Chapter 3 - LOCKER 214
“Who?”
Hannah’s question came instantly.
Evelyn looked toward the transport workers outside.
“We need to move.”
Dominic refused to let the answer disappear into another mystery.
“Who did Hannah see Santoro kill?”
Evelyn met his eyes.
“A researcher named Dr. Samuel Price.”
The false surname on Evelyn’s transfer paperwork suddenly made sense.
Price wasn’t random.
“He helped me,” Evelyn said. “Using his name was how people inside the network identified safe locations.”
Hannah looked at her mother.
“Then why don’t I remember a murder?”
“You didn’t see the body. You saw Santoro strike him and drag him into a restricted room. You heard enough to understand something terrible had happened.”
“And afterward?”
“I told you it was an accident.”
Hannah’s eyes burned.
“You lied.”
“I was trying to keep a sixteen-year-old girl alive.”
For once, Hannah had no answer.
Dominic ordered his security chief to keep every transport worker on-site until authorities arrived and to restore Rosewood’s backup power manually.
Then Hannah, Dominic, Teresa, Evelyn, Frank, and Walter headed toward Rosewood’s oldest wing.
“No,” Hannah told Frank when he followed.
The eighty-four-year-old frowned.
“You think standing between you and armed security was the end of my evening?”
“Frank—”
“I spent forty years installing electrical systems. If there’s an old wing, I know more about what’s behind those walls than any of you.”
Walter raised his cane.
“And I’m nosy.”
Despite everything, Hannah almost smiled.
Room 214 had become a linen closet.
The brass key opened nothing inside it.
Frank studied the walls.
“Because the room numbers changed.”
He tapped the baseboard with his cane.
Behind a storage shelf, they found an old ceramic tile stamped 214.
A narrow metal cabinet had been painted over repeatedly.
The key turned.
Inside sat no dramatic stack of secret files.
Only three objects.
A photograph.
A gold watch.
And a sealed cassette tape.
Dominic picked up the watch.
His face emptied.
“My father’s.”
Hannah recognized it too.
The same broad gold face from her recovered memory.
She had assumed Santoro had been wearing it.
She had been wrong.
The man arguing in that hallway had been Carlo.
The reversal hit her hard.
“Maybe Santoro wasn’t the man I saw.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“He was there. But Carlo was too.”
The photograph showed Carlo, Evelyn, Dr. Price, and Michael Santoro at a medical fundraiser.
Vanessa stood at the edge of the picture.
She looked barely twenty.
Dominic stared.
“My sister knew him that far back?”
Teresa lowered her eyes.
“Michael gave Vanessa her first internship.”
Dominic looked furious.
“You let her work for him?”
“I thought Carlo trusted him.”
Evelyn sat heavily in a chair.
“That’s how Santoro survived. Everyone thought somebody else trusted him.”
Hannah picked up the cassette.
Written across it:
FOR TERESA — IF CARLO DOESN’T COME HOME.
They found an old cassette player in Rosewood’s recreation room.
Carlo’s voice filled the small space.
“Teresa, if you’re hearing this, Michael knows I copied the trial records.”
Teresa covered her mouth.
Carlo described discovering that Santoro had expanded legitimate research into an illegal program targeting people unlikely to challenge unexplained medical changes—uninsured patients, rehabilitation residents, low-income workers, and eventually seniors.
Carlo had tried to shut down the facilities.
Santoro threatened Dominic and Vanessa.
“So I pretended to cooperate,” Carlo said on the tape.
Dominic stared at the machine.
His father had spent his final months publicly defending Santoro.
Dominic had hated him for it.
Now he understood.
Carlo had been buying time.
Then the tape changed everything again.
“Vanessa knows part of this. Do not blame her for what she does next. Michael has something on her.”
Dominic stopped the tape.
“What?”
Teresa shook her head.
“I never heard this.”
Hannah pressed play.
Carlo continued.
“The original participant ledger is not with me. Evelyn has the location. Michael believes Hannah saw where it was hidden. She didn’t. Keep that girl away from him.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Hannah turned on her.
“You knew where the ledger was.”
“Yes.”
“Do you still?”
Evelyn hesitated.
That hesitation frightened Hannah more than an answer.
“It was moved.”
“Where?”
“By Vanessa.”
Dominic stood.
“My sister has it?”
“Or had it.”
Evelyn explained that years later Vanessa had found her through a private clinic. Vanessa admitted Santoro was using Rosewood and wanted out.
She helped Evelyn move between safe facilities.
“She was helping you?”
“For years.”
Hannah remembered Vanessa coldly firing her.
The wine bottles.
The accusation.
The fear behind her eyes.
Vanessa had still done something cruel.
But perhaps cruelty had been the only weapon she thought she had.
“Why didn’t she expose him?”
Evelyn looked at Dominic.
“Because Santoro had convinced her that exposing him would destroy you.”
Dominic gave a humorless laugh.
“That sounds like him.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “Literally destroy you.”
She pointed toward the cassette.
Carlo’s recording resumed.
“If Michael is still using my companies after I’m gone, Dominic will appear responsible on paper. I signed too much before I understood what he was doing.”
Dominic went silent.
Hannah finally understood Santoro’s leverage.
If the operation became public without the original records, Dominic could appear to be the architect.
Santoro had spent years building a shield out of the Romano family.
Walter suddenly noticed writing on the back of the photograph.
BLUEBIRD — 3:15 — V.R.
“Vanessa,” he said.
Evelyn nodded.
“Bluebird was our emergency meeting place.”
“Where?”
“The courtyard.”
They went outside.
Near an old stone birdbath, Hannah found something taped beneath the rim.
Vanessa’s bracelet.
Dominic recognized it immediately.
Their father had given Vanessa matching emerald bracelets on her eighteenth birthday.
Wrapped around it was a narrow strip from a resident meal ticket.
Hannah unfolded it.
Vanessa had written four words:
ERIC IS NOT WITH MICHAEL.
Dominic frowned.
“Then who is he with?”
A movement came from the darkened garden.
Eric Sloan stepped from behind the hedges.
Dominic’s guards raised their weapons.
Eric lifted both hands.
“I can take you to Vanessa.”
Dominic moved toward him.
“Where is she?”
Eric swallowed.
“Safe for maybe another hour.”
“From Santoro?”
Eric shook his head.
“No.”
He looked at Evelyn.
“From the person who gave Santoro access to Rosewood.”
Teresa gripped her cane.
“Who?”
May you like
Eric’s eyes settled on the illuminated windows of the medical wing.
“The person still running this place.”
