Chapter 9 - Northbridge
The building looked abandoned from the street.
Boarded windows. Rusted fence. No sign.
Then Ortiz swept her flashlight across the roof.
A red beacon blinked once.
Lucy’s drawing.
We entered through a side door Melissa’s old assignment notes identified as a service access.
The hallway smelled like bleach and wet plaster.
Children’s cartoon stickers still clung to one wall.
A dinosaur.
A yellow star.
A smiling cloud.
Every patient room was empty.
Beds stripped.
Closets open.
No personal items.
Too clean for abandonment.
“They cleared it,” Ortiz said.
“Recently.”
My shoe stuck to something near a medication cart.
Fresh adhesive.
A label had been ripped off.
I found another under the wheel.
MAYA BELL.
The girl Lucy had pointed to on the card.
I pocketed it.
A metal door at the end of the hall led downstairs.
Locked.
Ortiz used a pry bar from her trunk.
The door gave on the third hit.
Below us, the air changed.
Cold.
Mechanical.
Rooms lined both sides of a narrow corridor.
Observation windows.
Restraint points bolted to walls.
I stopped looking at them.
“Adrian.”
Ortiz stood by an old reception desk.
Under the drawer, scratched into the wood:
B-17.
Rachel’s handwriting.
I knew every hard angle of it.
My fingers hovered over the letters.
“She was here.”
Ortiz scanned the hall.
“Room B-17?”
The map on the wall showed B-01 through B-16.
No seventeen.
A sound came from behind a linen cabinet.
One dull knock.
Then another.
We pulled the cabinet away.
A narrow steel door sat behind it.
No label.
Ortiz fired at the lock only after shouting twice.
The door opened inward.
A woman sat on the floor with her wrists zip-tied to a pipe.
Split lip.
Bruises.
Same face from the video.
Mara Vale.
Her eyes landed on me.
“Adrian?”
I cut her restraints.
“Where’s Lucy?” she asked.
My hand stopped.
“Reed took her.”
Mara pulled against the half-cut tie so hard it sliced her skin.
“No.”
“Sit still.”
“No, no, no.”
Ortiz crouched.
“Why?”
Mara looked at me.
“Because Lucy knows what happened to Rachel.”
My chest tightened.
“What does she know?”
Mara opened her mouth.
A shot cracked somewhere above us.
Dust jumped from the ceiling.
Then another.
Ortiz killed her flashlight.
In the dark, Mara whispered:
May you like
“They’re here.”
