Chapter 7 - The Man Behind the Trigger
Noah collapsed into my arms.
Blood spread across his shirt.
I lowered him to the floor.
“Stay with me!”
He pressed a hand against his side.
Detective Mitchell's team rushed through the entrance.
“Shots fired! Get down!”
I covered Noah while officers moved toward the back of the church.
A second gunshot rang out.
Then silence.
One officer shouted that the shooter had escaped through the cemetery.
An ambulance arrived within minutes.
Noah was conscious when they loaded him inside.
I climbed in beside him.
“Don't you dare die again,” I said.
He managed a weak smile.
“Still giving orders?”
“Someone has to.”
At the hospital, surgeons took him into emergency surgery.
I waited outside.
My phone rang.
Sophia.
I answered immediately.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Ethan?”
Her voice was stronger.
“I'm here.”
“Did you find him?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Is he alive?”
“He's in surgery.”
She began crying.
Then she said something unexpected.
“Ethan, I remember where the ledger is.”
I stood.
“Where?”
“Dad's old workshop.”
I frowned.
“Your father's workshop?”
“Yes. He kept a locked cabinet there. Noah and I hid something inside years ago.”
“What?”
“The original recording.”
I froze.
“What recording?”
Sophia explained that she'd secretly recorded a conversation between Richard and Daniel six years earlier.
They were discussing our father's death.
She had hidden the recording inside an old music box.
But she never managed to retrieve it.
“Why didn't you tell the police?”
“Because the recording wasn't complete. It captured Richard admitting he had arranged the accident, but Daniel said something about a second payment.”
“What second payment?”
Sophia started crying again.
“I think they were paying someone inside the hospital.”
My stomach tightened.
Before I could ask anything else, the line went dead.
I called back.
No answer.
Then a nurse rushed into the hallway.
“Mr. Walker?”
I turned.
“What's wrong?”
“Your wife is missing.”
For a moment, I couldn't understand her.
“What?”
“She was moved from her room. The transfer order was signed by an authorized family representative.”
“Who?”
The nurse checked her paperwork.
“Richard Carter.”
I ran toward the elevators.
Security was already reviewing the footage.
The video showed two men entering Sophia's room wearing hospital transport uniforms.
They moved her onto a stretcher.
A third person walked behind them.
Richard.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Call the police!”
Detective Mitchell was already on her way.
She ordered an immediate search for Richard's vehicle.
The hospital's security system had captured the ambulance's license plate.
It belonged to a private medical transport company owned by Daniel Reeves.
I called Noah's phone.
A nurse answered.
“He's out of surgery. He's stable.”
I explained what had happened.
The nurse passed the phone to him.
His voice was weak.
“Ethan, listen.”
“Not now.”
“Listen to me. Samuel wasn't just a night supervisor.”
I stopped moving.
“He was a patient.”
“What?”
“Samuel worked undercover at Hawthorne House after his son disappeared. He was investigating the facility.”
I remembered the old photograph.
The hospital uniform.
The notebook.
“What happened to his son?”
Noah hesitated.
“His son was the boy in the photograph.”
I looked at the picture again.
The scar.
The little boy.
The date.
“Then who is the man in the photograph with Samuel?”
Noah swallowed.
“That's not Samuel's son.”
“Who is he?”
Noah's answer came slowly.
“That's Richard Carter.”
I stared at the photograph.
It was an old picture.
Richard was much younger.
But the boy beside him wasn't Noah.
It was someone else.
Someone whose identity I had never considered.
Noah continued.
“Samuel was investigating Richard because his son vanished after being admitted to Hawthorne House. He believes Richard changed the child's identity.”
I felt a terrible chill.
“Why?”
“Because Richard's real name isn't Richard Carter.”
I looked toward the hospital entrance.
Detective Mitchell was arriving.
May you like
Noah whispered the final sentence.
“Ethan, your father-in-law may not be Sophia's biological father.”
