Chapter 5 - FRANK’S WATCH
Hannah stared at Frank.
“He paid you?”
Frank lowered himself into a chair.
“Five hundred dollars.”
Walter whistled softly.
Frank glared at him.
“I didn’t spend it.”
From beneath his watchband, Frank pulled a folded bank receipt.
“I kept the serial numbers.”
Hannah blinked.
“Why?”
“Because I’m old, not stupid.”
Three months earlier, Frank had wandered into Rosewood’s medication room after confusing the doors during a nighttime bathroom trip.
He saw Keller relabeling prescription bottles.
Keller later approached him privately and suggested Frank’s “memory problems” could create unnecessary confusion.
Then he handed Frank cash.
“I acted confused,” Frank said. “Wanted to see what he’d do.”
Hannah almost hugged him and scolded him at the same time.
“You should have told someone.”
“I tried.”
“Who?”
Frank looked toward Vanessa.
“Her.”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“He did.”
Hannah turned.
“And?”
“I told him to keep pretending.”
Frank gave a small shrug.
“She said it might keep me safe.”
Hannah was beginning to understand Vanessa’s greatest flaw.
She protected people by controlling them.
By lying.
By deciding what they could handle.
Perhaps she had learned it from an entire family that survived by hiding truth.
Hannah looked at her.
“No more.”
Vanessa nodded.
“No more.”
Frank led them to a medication storage room.
Behind boxes of nutritional supplements was a portable cooler containing the same blue tablets.
Dominic photographed everything before anyone touched it.
Inside the cooler lid was a shipping label.
Not Lakeshore Clinical Research.
MERIDIAN MEMORY FOUNDATION.
Teresa recognized it.
“Michael’s charity.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“Not Michael’s.”
She looked at Dominic.
“Ours.”
The Romano family foundation had donated millions to Meridian.
Dominic’s expression darkened.
Santoro had been moving money through charitable grants.
Again, Dominic’s name was everywhere.
Hannah noticed a smaller label beneath the shipping sticker.
A date.
Tomorrow.
FINAL OBSERVATION CYCLE.
The state inspection wasn’t the only deadline.
The trial itself was ending.
“What happens at the end?” Hannah asked.
Evelyn answered quietly.
“They erase the trail.”
Nobody asked what that meant.
They didn’t need to.
Dominic immediately ordered every resident’s medication suspended pending independent review and arranged for outside physicians to examine anyone who had received the blue pills.
Hannah stayed with the residents.
That mattered to her.
For all the secrets surrounding her mother and Santoro, sixty-seven people had stood between her and security when she had nothing.
Now she stood between them and whatever Rosewood had become.
Mrs. Patterson caught Hannah’s hand.
“You look scared.”
“I am.”
“So are we.”
Hannah sat beside her.
Mrs. Patterson smiled.
“Doesn’t mean we’re leaving you alone.”
Across the room, Dominic watched.
Something in his expression softened.
Later, he found Hannah in the kitchen making soup.
“You’re cooking?”
“People still need dinner.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“Frank says fear makes him hungry.”
From the dining room Frank yelled, “It does.”
Dominic almost smiled.
Then Hannah’s expression became serious.
“Your father’s watch.”
He looked at his wrist.
He had put Carlo’s recovered watch on without realizing it.
“It stopped at 3:17,” Hannah said.
Dominic checked.
She was right.
“Dad’s accident happened around three in the morning.”
“Exactly when?”
Dominic called his security chief, who retrieved the archived police report.
Estimated collision time:
3:17 a.m.
The watch had stopped when Carlo crashed.
But the watch had been locked inside Rosewood.
“How did it get here?” Dominic asked.
Teresa knew.
“Carlo came to Rosewood before he died.”
She had found mud on his shoes that morning.
At the time, Rosewood was still under renovation.
“He told me he’d finally put something where Michael could never find it.”
The ledger?
No.
The ledger had been with Evelyn.
So Carlo had hidden something else.
Hannah remembered the cassette.
If Carlo doesn’t come home.
He had known he might die.
Frank examined the watch.
“My brother repaired watches.”
He pressed the crown.
Nothing.
Then he turned the case over.
“There’s a scratch around the back plate.”
Using a tiny screwdriver from his eyeglass kit, he opened it.
Inside was a paper disc no larger than a quarter.
Numbers circled the edge.
67 — 12 — 3 — 17.
Walter frowned.
“Lottery numbers?”
Frank snorted.
“With your luck?”
Hannah stared at 67.
The number of residents scheduled for transfer.
But Carlo had written it nine years earlier.
Long before those sixty-seven people lived at Rosewood.
“It doesn’t mean residents,” Hannah said.
Evelyn looked at the sequence.
Her face changed.
“Trial 67.”
She explained.
The original illegal research had been internally labeled Protocol 67.
Twelve represented the number of original staff witnesses.
3:17 was not merely the crash time.
“It was the access code Carlo used for physical archives.”
Dominic looked at the final number.
“So where?”
Evelyn pointed at the watch.
The engraved Romano crest on its back contained a tiny rose.
Rosewood.
They returned to room 214.
Frank examined the old cabinet.
“There.”
A second keyhole was hidden beneath the bottom shelf.
The sequence opened an internal compartment.
Inside sat a single envelope.
No giant file.
No ledger.
Just a child’s necklace.
Hannah recognized it instantly.
A silver moon pendant.
“My mother gave me this.”
She had lost it the night Evelyn disappeared.
Wrapped around the chain was a hospital identification bracelet.
HANNAH BROOKS — AGE 16.
On the back, Carlo had written:
SHE IS THE WITNESS. NOT THE SUBJECT.
Hannah’s throat tightened.
For eighteen years, Santoro had manipulated records to make her appear connected to the trial as a participant.
Carlo had preserved proof that she had been there as a witness.
Dominic found something else inside the envelope.
A parking ticket from St. Matthew’s.
Time stamped the night of Dr. Price’s attack.
Vehicle plate.
Registered owner:
MARTIN KELLER.
Keller had been there eighteen years ago.
Hannah’s recovered memory shifted again.
The man dragging Dr. Price.
She remembered white sleeves beneath a dark coat.
Not Santoro.
A doctor.
“Keller,” she whispered.
Evelyn looked at her.
Hannah’s eyes filled with recognition.
“It wasn’t Santoro who attacked Dr. Price.”
Dominic understood.
Santoro had built the operation.
But Keller had been its hands.
Then Hannah noticed handwriting on the back of the parking ticket.
Not Carlo’s.
Her mother’s.
IF MARTIN FINDS HANNAH AGAIN, ASK HIM WHAT HE DID WITH SUBJECT ZERO.
Dominic looked at Evelyn.
“Who is Subject Zero?”
Evelyn didn’t answer.
Hannah did.
She had seen that phrase somewhere.
In the participant ledger.
She grabbed it and flipped to the first page.
May you like
There, before every numbered trial participant, was one handwritten entry.
SUBJECT ZERO — TERESA ROMANO.
