Chapter 5 - THE SECOND GIRL
The abandoned greenhouse complex looked dead from the road.
Four acres of shattered glass stretched behind a rusted chain-link fence thirty-eight miles north of Indianapolis.
Once, the property had supplied specialty flowers to hotels and wedding venues throughout the Midwest.
Now weeds grew through cracked loading docks.
Plastic sheeting snapped in the September wind.
Two long greenhouse structures had collapsed beneath years of neglect.
A third remained standing.
The fourth had no roof.
According to property records, the land belonged to Meridian Agricultural Holdings.
According to Detective Ortiz, Meridian Agricultural Holdings belonged to another company, which belonged to another company, which eventually led to a financial trust administered by Holloway Family Relief.
By 6:40 p.m., police had surrounded the property.
I was nowhere near it.
Nor should I have been.
I was sitting beside Wren’s hospital bed while she slept with her mother curled in a chair beside her.
People sometimes imagine that doing the right thing places you at the center of everything that follows.
Usually it does not.
I had activated a protocol.
I had believed a child.
Now trained investigators were doing the dangerous part.
And I was doing the only part Wren had asked me to do.
Stay.
Talia sat across the room.
Declan had returned to the clinic.
Naomi was completing emergency placement documentation guaranteeing that Wren would remain with Elise under law-enforcement protection while questions surrounding the fraudulent guardianship were resolved.
My phone vibrated.
Ortiz.
I stepped into the hallway.
“They’re in,” she said.
“Greenhouse Four?”
“Yes.”
I heard men shouting in the background.
“What did they find?”
“Give me a second.”
A door slammed.
Someone called for bolt cutters.
Then silence.
“Ortiz?”
“I’m here.”
Another voice shouted something I could not make out.
Ortiz breathed.
“They found a below-grade structure.”
“The house underneath?”
“Looks more like an old storm-storage bunker.”
“The key?”
“Works.”
My eyes closed.
“Ivy?”
“Searching.”
I heard footsteps.
Fast.
Then Ortiz shouted, “Medic!”
My heart stopped.
“What happened?”
No answer.
“Lena?”
Her voice returned seconds later.
“We have a child.”
I pressed one hand against the hospital wall.
“Alive?”
“Alive.”
My knees almost gave out.
“How bad?”
“Conscious. Dehydrated. Scared. Looks like she has asthma.”
Wren had mentioned an inhaler.
“Is it Ivy?”
“We’re confirming.”
A small voice sounded somewhere near Ortiz.
I could not hear the words.
Then Ortiz said, more softly, “Yes.”
I covered my face.
They had found her.
Ten-year-old Ivy Chen was carried from the underground room wrapped in a police jacket.
She had been alone.
Everett had apparently moved her shortly after Celestine left my clinic, then abandoned the property when he learned law enforcement was searching the Carmel house.
But he had made one mistake.
He had assumed Wren would never leave the basement with the brass key.
Police transported Ivy to St. Catherine.
She arrived shortly before nine.
The girls were not allowed to see each other immediately because detectives needed separate interviews and medical examinations.
But Wren knew.
The second she heard wheels moving down the protected corridor, she sat upright.
“Ivy?”
Elise looked at me.
I nodded.
“They found her.”
Wren began crying again.
Then laughing.
Then crying harder.
“She’s alive?”
“She’s alive.”
“I told you.”
“You did.”
“I told you where she was.”
“You did.”
Nobody corrected the fact that Wren had technically given us only a clue.
She had done enough.
More than enough.
Ivy’s father, Nolan Chen, had not been found.
That became the next nightmare.
Nolan had worked as controller for Holloway Family Relief for six years.
Three months before Ivy disappeared, he resigned without explanation.
Two weeks later, he vanished.
His daughter disappeared shortly afterward from her grandmother’s home.
Police had initially treated Nolan as a possible parental abductor.
Now the entire theory collapsed.
When Ivy was medically stable enough to talk, Detective Ortiz interviewed her with a child forensic specialist.
I stayed away.
Hours passed.
Elise finally convinced Wren to eat half a cup of applesauce.
Her fever had dropped below one hundred.
The swelling in her face had begun responding to treatment.
Normal things slowly returned.
A cartoon played quietly on television.
Talia brushed Wren’s hair.
Elise made three phone calls to relatives who had spent eighty-seven days expecting the worst.
For a little while, the world almost behaved normally.
Then Ortiz entered.
One look at her ended that illusion.
“What did Ivy say?” Elise asked.
Ortiz closed the door.
“She says her father is alive.”
Wren sat upright.
“Where?”
“We don’t know.”
“Celestine said he was dead.”
“She lied.”
Wren looked at her mother.
“She lies about everything.”
“Yes,” Elise whispered.
Ortiz turned toward Elise.
“I need you to explain the blue drive.”
Elise’s body stiffened.
“You know about that?”
“Celestine asked Wren repeatedly where you kept it.”
Elise looked at her daughter.
Guilt spread across her face.
“Oh, God.”
“Mom?”
Elise sat beside Wren.
“You did nothing wrong.”
“What is it?”
Elise looked toward Ortiz.
Then me.
Then finally spoke.
“Holloway Family Relief hired my firm last year.”
“For what?” Ortiz asked.
“Forensic accounting.”
The charity managed almost sixty million dollars annually through donations, government grants, emergency housing contracts, and family-assistance programs.
A whistleblower had raised concerns about invoices.
Elise’s team found more than concerns.
They found shell vendors.
Duplicate reimbursements.
Payments to companies with no employees.
Emergency housing funds routed through private trusts.
Millions disappearing.
“How much?” Ortiz asked.
“Fourteen-point-six million we could prove.”
Talia stared at her.
“Celestine?”
“She approved most of it indirectly.”
“And Nolan?”
“He discovered the first shell company.”
“Why didn’t he go to police?”
“He intended to.”
“What happened?”
Elise swallowed.
“He called me one night and said somebody had been inside his house. He told me not to trust the foundation’s attorneys. The next morning, he disappeared.”
“So you copied the financial evidence.”
“Yes.”
“To the blue drive?”
Elise nodded.
“I encrypted it.”
“Where is it?”
She hesitated.
“That information stays between me and federal investigators.”
Ortiz gave a small nod.
“Fair.”
Wren watched her mother.
“Is that why they took me?”
Elise’s face broke.
“I think so.”
“Because of your work?”
“Yes.”
For the first time since their reunion, Wren pulled her hand away from her mother.
The movement was small.
But devastating.
“You should have given it to them.”
Elise stopped breathing.
“Wren—”
“If you gave it to them, they would have let me go.”
“No.”
“You don’t know.”
“They never intended to let you become a witness.”
Wren stared at her.
“You chose a computer thing over me.”
“No.”
Elise’s voice cracked.
“I chose the only evidence that might make law enforcement believe me about why you were taken. I sent copies before they ever contacted me. They kept telling me they would hurt you if I talked. I talked anyway because silence was exactly what they wanted.”
Wren turned away.
I wanted to intervene.
I didn’t.
Some wounds should not be interrupted because the truth hurts on its way out.
Elise began crying.
“I looked for you every day.”
Wren said nothing.
“I slept with your bedroom light on.”
Nothing.
“I drove to Indiana six times because I thought you might be here.”
Still nothing.
Then Wren whispered, “I thought you forgot me.”
Elise placed a hand on the blanket.
“I would have forgotten my own name before I forgot yours.”
Wren looked at her.
The anger did not disappear.
But she allowed her mother’s hand to stay.
Ortiz’s phone rang.
She answered.
“Go.”
Her expression sharpened.
“When?”
Silence.
“Send it.”
She looked at me.
“We recovered security footage from Greenhouse Four.”
“Everett?”
“Yes.”
“Celestine?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Ortiz showed us a still image.
A gray van had pulled behind the greenhouse at 3:14 that morning.
Everett was visible near the driver’s door.
Beside him stood a second man.
Thin.
Unshaven.
Hands restrained.
Ivy’s father.
Nolan Chen.
Alive.
The next image showed Everett forcing him toward an underground entrance.
“But Ivy said her father wasn’t there,” Elise whispered.
Ortiz swiped to the next frame.
Timestamp: 5:52 p.m.
Less than one hour before police arrived.
The same van was leaving.
“Everett moved him again.”
Wren looked at the photograph.
“I know where.”
Ortiz turned.
“What?”
Wren had gone pale.
“I heard him talking to Celestine.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Nolan couldn’t stay at Greenhouse Four because somebody had been asking questions.”
“Where were they taking him?”
Wren squeezed her eyes shut.
“I don’t remember.”
“Don’t force it,” I said.
“No.”
She pressed her hands to her temples.
“He said…”
Elise reached for her.
Wren shook her off.
“He said the house name.”
“What house?” Ortiz asked.
Wren suddenly opened her eyes.
“The Orchard.”
Ortiz looked at Mills.
He was already searching.
“There are six foundation properties with orchard-related names.”
Wren shook her head.
“No. Not a real orchard.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was underneath one.”
Everyone stopped.
Wren looked at me.
“That’s what Ivy meant.”
“The house under the greenhouse?”
“No.”
She shook her head harder.
“The key opened Greenhouse Four.”
“Then what?”
“There was another key inside.”
Ortiz went rigid.
“Where?”
Wren whispered the answer.
“In Ivy’s inhaler.”
Three rooms down the hallway, Ivy Chen had just been medically cleared.
And before any of us could reach her, a hospital nurse came running toward us holding an empty plastic inhaler case.
“Ivy says there was a metal piece inside this.”
Ortiz grabbed it.
“Where is it now?”
The nurse looked terrified.
“She says the man who moved her from the emergency department took it.”
“What man?”
“A county child-services officer.”
May you like
Naomi Price slowly stood.
“I never sent anyone.”
