Anna stared at the empty chair while Harper was still reading the message on Kenneth Vale’s phone.
I have Clare. Bring the case.
For several seconds the words and the absence refused to connect. Clare had been beside her. She had stepped into the corridor. There were officers in the building. Doors required credentials. The location had been restricted after Dererick exposed the earlier one.
Yet Clare was gone.
“Lock the building,” Harper said.
Everything moved at once.
Officers checked stairwells, elevators, service exits, parking areas. Security footage was pulled. Anna remained where she was told, though every instinct demanded movement.
“How long?”
“Eleven minutes.”
Eleven minutes was enough.
The hospital call Clare had stepped out to answer had not come through the hospital. A spoofed number appeared on her phone history. The call lasted forty-three seconds.
Her phone was found in a restroom trash bin.
Anna looked at Harper.
“Clare wouldn’t throw it away.”
“No.”
“So somebody told her to.”
“Or took it.”
Anna shook her head.
Clare had spent days living inside security protocols. She would not follow an unknown person voluntarily because of a phone call.
Unless the caller knew exactly what would make her move.
“Check Peterson.”
Harper immediately did.
Peterson was safe with his daughter.
“Elise.”
Safe.
“Nolan.”
In custody.
Anna thought through everyone Clare might believe was in immediate danger.
Then she understood.
“Me.”
Harper looked at her.
“He told her something happened to me.”
“But she had just left you.”
“He could say I collapsed. That I’d been moved. That someone needed her medical help.”
The building footage supplied part of the answer.
Clare appeared in a service corridor three minutes after leaving Anna. She was alone.
She walked quickly but did not appear physically forced.
At one point she stopped and looked directly at a ceiling camera.
Then touched her left ear.
Anna leaned toward the monitor.
“Go back.”
The footage replayed.
Clare touched her ear.
Then her wrist.
Then her throat.
Three gestures.
Not random.
Anna remembered childhood.
When they were girls, Clare invented silent signals during long family dinners. Ear meant listen. Wrist meant time. Throat meant cannot speak.
Anna felt a sudden pressure behind her ribs.
“She knew someone would watch this.”
Harper replayed it.
Listen.
Time.
Cannot speak.
Clare continued toward a service exit.
Another camera showed a maintenance worker meeting her.
Cap.
Mask.
Hospital jacket.
He held a phone toward her.
Clare looked at the screen.
Her body changed.
Shoulders rigid.
Hands still.
Then she followed him.
“Who is he?” Harper asked.
The image was enhanced.
Not Vale.
Not Dererick.
A younger man.
Hospital security checked the uniform.
Stolen.
The badge belonged to an employee currently on leave.
The stranger had entered using a cloned access card.
Vale had help.
Again.
Anna felt the old panic threatening to become useless.
She forced herself to watch Clare instead.
At the exit, her sister stumbled.
Not badly.
Her hand struck the wall.
Then she kept walking.
“Stop.”
Harper froze the frame.
A dark mark remained on the pale wall.
Clare had dragged one finger across it.
Blood.
She had cut herself.
Anna remembered Clare’s joke about knowing where not to leave bruises.
Her sister knew exactly how evidence worked.
“She’s marking the route.”
Investigators searched the corridor.
A small smear of blood appeared near the exit.
Outside, another spot marked the edge of a concrete pillar.
Then another beside the parking lane.
Clare had created a trail.
Security footage showed the maintenance worker guiding her into a gray van.
Clare paused at the passenger door and pressed her bloody finger against the handle.
DNA would establish she had been there.
But the gesture did more.
It drew attention to the van.
Traffic cameras picked it up.
The plate was stolen.
The vehicle traveled east.
Harper dispatched units.
Anna watched the route form across a map.
The van avoided major intersections.
Whoever drove understood camera coverage.
“Vale?”
Harper shook her head. “We don’t know.”
Kenneth Vale’s known pattern relied on intermediaries. Private investigators. Staff. Compromised people.
Dererick learned that too.
But this abduction felt different.
Vale was cornered.
His professional protection was collapsing.
Paul’s records existed.
Daphne’s recording existed.
Rachel’s death had reopened.
He needed the originals case.
Clare was leverage.
Exactly the mechanism he had taught.
Anna looked at Vale’s recovered phone.
“How did he send Dererick a message from a phone found in Dererick’s crashed car?”
Harper stopped.
That problem had been obscured by Clare’s disappearance.
If Vale had Clare now, why was his phone with Dererick?
“Could Dererick have stolen it at the lake house?”
“Yes.”
“Then the message couldn’t have been sent from Vale after that.”
Forensics checked.
The message timestamp was genuine.
But it had been sent through a linked web account.
Vale did not need the physical phone.
He had accessed the messaging service elsewhere.
That session left a trace.
A public Wi-Fi network.
The address belonged to a medical office complex.
One suite was vacant.
Police arrived.
Inside they found a laptop.
Disposable gloves.
Clare’s hospital profile printed on paper.
And surveillance photographs of Anna.
The room had been used recently.
No Clare.
No Vale.
The laptop contained browser history pointing to traffic cameras and public records.
Vale was using a smaller version of Dererick’s infrastructure.
Not as sophisticated.
Enough.
Then Harper received an update.
The gray van had been found behind a shopping center.
Empty.
Clare’s blood remained on the passenger handle.
Inside was a syringe cap.
A torn strip of medical tape.
And a paper coffee cup.
No obvious signs of a struggle.
Anna stared at the photographs.
Something about the cup bothered her.
Clare rarely drank coffee from paper cups when she was working.
She carried a metal bottle.
That did not matter.
Except Clare understood fingerprints.
“Bag the cup.”
“It already is.”
“Check the sleeve.”
Harper looked at her.
“Why?”
“Clare leaves notes on anything she can.”
Technicians removed the cardboard sleeve.
Inside, written in tiny letters, were three characters.
K 4 N.
Harper frowned.
Anna understood only the middle symbol.
“Four.”
Clare’s silent signal had included time.
Maybe the notation was not a word.
“Kenneth. Four. North?”
Harper mapped likely destinations north of the shopping center.
Too many.
Anna thought about Clare’s circumstances.
She could not know street names from inside a van.
But she could observe turns.
Hear sounds.
See signs.
K 4 N could mean something visible.
Investigators searched businesses and roads.
A facility called K4 North Storage stood nine miles away.
Too convenient.
Police went anyway.
Unit records showed nothing connected to Vale.
Then an officer noticed a surveillance camera had been disabled.
Inside a recently rented unit they found Clare’s scarf.
Nothing else.
Another transfer point.
Vale was moving her repeatedly to make tracking difficult.
Anna felt fury rising.
“He’s doing what Dererick did.”
Harper understood.
“He’s creating layers.”
Clare’s scarf contained something in its hem.
A torn piece of paper.
She had folded it small and pushed it through a loose seam.
On it she had written:
OLDER MAN. BLUE RING. CALLED HIM DR V. SAID “SCHOOL.”
Anna read it.
“She saw Vale.”
Harper nodded.
And “school” might indicate the next destination.
Vale’s education center?
Too obvious.
His former university?
Possible.
The hospital training building?
Also possible.
Clare had heard him say the word, not necessarily understood its meaning.
Nolan was asked.
“School?”
His face changed.
“There was an old nursing school.”
Vale had once used a decommissioned nursing college for weekend seminars before the property was sold.
Nolan had visited it with Dererick once.
“Where?”
The building stood north of the city.
Most had been converted into offices.
One original wing remained vacant awaiting renovation.
Police surrounded it.
Inside they found signs of recent entry.
Food.
Bottled water.
Medical tape.
A chair.
Clare’s blood on a sink.
But no Clare.
Anna’s knees weakened.
Vale remained one move ahead.
Then an officer found a message scratched beneath the chair.
Not words.
Numbers.
2:17.
Anna stared at the photograph.
“That isn’t Clare’s time.”
It was hers.
The hour Dererick entered the bedroom.
Why would Clare write it?
Unless Vale had.
Harper considered another possibility.
“Could Clare be telling us Dererick is involved?”
Anna shook her head.
The message on Vale’s phone demanded Dererick bring the case.
Vale and Dererick were adversaries now.
But Clare might have overheard something.
Investigators searched the room.
Behind a loose radiator cover was an audio recorder.
Cheap.
Still running.
Clare had hidden it.
The recording contained hours of movement and muffled voices.
Harper skipped through.
Then Kenneth Vale became audible.
“You think he’ll come for you.”
Clare answered.
“I think you think he will.”
Vale laughed softly.
“You’re more like your sister than he realized.”
“Apparently that was his mistake.”
Anna closed her eyes briefly.
Clare sounded frightened.
But controlled.
Vale continued.
“Dererick has something that belongs to me.”
“No. He has evidence.”
“Evidence is simply property with a story attached.”
Clare answered, “That sounds like something a guilty man says.”
A slap-like sound followed.
Anna flinched.
Clare’s voice returned moments later.
“You’re still guilty.”
Harper let the recording continue.
Vale demanded Clare call Dererick.
She refused.
Vale said Dererick would respond if he believed Anna was next.
Then Clare said something strange.
“He won’t come at 2:17.”
Vale asked why.
“Because Anna will understand.”
Anna leaned forward.
The number scratched beneath the chair was Clare’s message.
Not about Dererick.
About Anna understanding.
“What am I supposed to understand?”
Clare had chosen the one time Anna could never forget.
A time.
Maybe she wanted Anna to think of clocks.
Schedules.
The recording continued.
Vale asked, “Understand what?”
Clare replied, “That you still think repetition makes you clever.”
Anna felt the clue settle.
Repetition.
Vale was returning to places from his old research.
The nursing school.
Paul’s property.
His old methods.
Where would he go next?
Anna thought of the numbered subjects.
Clinical rooms.
The hospital education center bearing his name.
Then Susan Bell supplied the answer.
Vale’s earliest approved memory studies had not taken place at the hospital.
They were conducted at a private sleep laboratory.
The building still existed.
Closed for years.
Owned now by Meridian Advisory.
Police moved.
Before they arrived, Vale contacted Dererick again.
This time investigators intercepted the linked account quickly.
One message.
Midnight. Bring Rachel and Paul. Come alone or Clare becomes Subject 22.
Anna read the number twice.
Rachel had been Subject 21.
Vale was not merely threatening Clare.
He was announcing that he intended to resume the sequence.
Click here to continue reading: PART 18: Inside Vale’s Abandoned Sleep Laboratory, Clare Faces the Method That Started Everything as Dererick Arrives Carrying the Evidence Both Men Fear
The Cup Anna Refused to Drink Became the First Crack in a Marriage Built Around Secrets She Was Never Meant to See
Part 17 of 22
