CHAPTER 5 — SOPHIE REMEMBERS
Therapy began helping Sophie recover memories she had buried.
One afternoon she stopped drawing.
Her pencil froze.
"I remember a room."
Mara looked up.
"What room?"
"No windows."
Sophie spoke slowly.
"There were other children."
"They all had numbers."
Not names.
Numbers.
One little boy kept calling a woman "Mother."
The woman slapped him.
"No," she told him.
"You belong to whoever pays."
Mara felt ice crawl through her veins.
Sophie suddenly covered her ears.
"There was music."
The same lullaby.
The exact melody Elaine Thorne used to hum during family dinners.
Not because she loved it.
Because it had been used for years inside the facility to calm terrified children before paperwork changed their identities.
Ruiz immediately reopened every missing-child case connected to Silver Oaks.
Within forty-eight hours...
twelve families contacted police.
Each reported the same lullaby.
The same woman.
The same expensive perfume.
May you like
Elaine Thorne had never been rescuing children.
She had been selecting them.
