Chapter 4

The back door of North Coast Surgical Pavilion opened with a soft click. My dock contact had left the service latch unlatched, giving me a narrow twelve-minute camera loop. The hallway smelled of harsh antiseptic, floor wax, and chilled metal.

I moved fast in the shadows. The blue-tile surgical suite sat at the end of the west wing. Through the reinforced observation glass, the operating room gleamed under dim night lights. In the center stood the narrow pedestal table, fitted with heavy leather restraint straps at the wrists and ankles. A stainless-steel tray beside it held bone drills and packets of experimental titanium plates. Emil’s voice echoed in my head: The table fixes bad kids.

My stomach turned, but I kept moving.

I reached the billing office two doors down. The computer terminal was locked, but Irina had taught me one crucial thing before she married Paul: arrogant surgeons always keep paper. In the bottom drawer of the desk, tucked beneath routine clinic audits, I found a thick black three-ring ledger.

I opened it under my penlight.

Page after page listed state wards and foster kids paired with experimental plate codes. And there, in the back section, was Irina’s name. Billing statements dated weeks after her death. Procedures performed on Emil. Pre-op consent forms signed with Irina’s slanted cursive, each stamped with an identical crimson notary seal.

I photographed every single page with my phone. I took the pre-op schedule for December 16, along with a sticky note in Paul’s precise handwriting: Hold OR 2 for Kessler boy. No parents.

Suddenly, the corridor fluorescents flickered and snapped on.

Heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. A security guard yelled, “Hey! Who’s back there?”

I slammed the drawer shut and bolted through the fire exit into the freezing downpour.

By the time I reached Pier 9, my phone was blowing up. Officer Miller. Paul’s attorney. A hospital administrator. Then Paul himself.

I answered.

“You broke into my clinic,” he said softly. “That’s a felony. Burglary. Endangering a minor. I will bury you, Nadia.”

“You buried my sister first,” I said.

He laughed. “Enjoy custody court tomorrow.”

The line went dead.

I looked at Ben. “He’s filing emergency custody.”

Ben’s face was grim. “He already did. Papers came while you were gone.”