Chapter 14 The Missing Nurse
1053 Words
Evelyn's POV
Benjamin called everyone to the sitting room the moment he saw the photograph.
We stood in a half circle in Aunt Mirabel's small sitting room, and for a moment nobody spoke. The photograph sat on the coffee table face up, my image blurred and grey and surrounded by the dark street outside the coffee shop.
"Someone followed us," Matthew said.
"Yes," Benjamin said.
"I checked the route before we left," Matthew said. His voice was firm but his jaw was tight. "There was no one behind us."
"They were already there," Emmanuel said. "They knew where we were going before we did. Someone tipped them off."
We all looked at one another.
"Patricia," I said slowly.
"Not necessarily," Emmanuel replied. "She could have been watched. Her contact with us may have been spotted before she even arrived."
Benjamin pulled out his phone and dialed. He spoke briefly, quietly, then hung up. "I am putting a protection detail on Sandra and Patricia tonight. My security contacts are already in the city."
"Christopher," Benjamin added for my benefit. "Our cousin, who's international security, is landing tomorrow."
I had not met Christopher yet. There were still four cousins I had not met. The thought of that felt strange, like knowing there were more doors in a house you had just entered and not yet knowing what was behind each one.
Aunt Mirabel stirred in her chair. She was a light sleeper, she had always been. She looked around the room, at all of us standing there and sat up slowly.
"What has happened?" she asked.
"Nothing you need to worry about," Moses said, moving to her side.
She looked at me. She had known me since I was nine years old, and she had never once believed that line.
"Someone followed Evelyn tonight," she said in a very convincing manner.
"We handled it," Benjamin said.
Aunt Mirabel looked at him for a long moment. Then she looked at me. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," I said.
"You are scared," she said.
"A little," I admitted. "But not more than I can carry."
She nodded slowly, accepting that, and pulled her book back onto her lap.
We worked through the rest of the night in shifts. Matthew took the first watch outside. Emmanuel sat at the kitchen table with his papers. Benjamin made calls in low tones from the hallway. Samuel brewed tea and brought cups to whoever needed one without being asked.
I sat in the rocking chair and tried to rest.
Around four in the morning, a call came in on Benjamin's phone. He stepped into the kitchen. I heard his voice drop very low, and then heard the kind of silence that is not calm but held.
He came back to the doorway.
"Sandra is gone," he said.
Everyone in the room went alert.
"She left the care home two hours ago. No record of discharge. No family signed her out. The staff found her room empty on their four o'clock round." He paused. "The facility has camera coverage in the corridors, but the camera nearest her room went offline at three forty-five."
"Someone cut it," Matthew said.
"Or it was arranged to fail," Emmanuel said.
I looked at Benjamin. "She is not dead," I said. I did not know why I said it with such certainty, but I believed it.
"We do not know that yet," he said carefully.
"The recording," I said. "Patricia has the real one. Whoever took Sandra cannot take what Patricia already gave to us. They are too late for that."
Benjamin considered this. "That is true. But Sandra's live testimony is still important. If we cannot produce her as a witness, Tonia's legal team will argue the recording is fabricated."
Emmanuel nodded. "We need to find her."
Christopher was called in early. I heard his voice through the phone at five in the morning, calm and clear, asking specific questions about timing and camera access points. He had contacts Benjamin described as "people who find people," and within thirty minutes, two teams were moving on different routes out of the city.
I went to the window at the front of the house and looked out at the dark. The street was quite. The red mailbox stood at the gate. The wildflowers Aunt Mirabel planted every spring were bowing slightly in a small wind.
I pressed my palm flat to the cold glass.
Behind me, I heard footsteps and then Moses setting something on the table. I turned. He had made toast and left a plate beside the rocking chair with a glass of water.
"Eat," he said.
"I am not hungry," I said.
"The baby is," he said, simply and without looking up, and went back to the kitchen.
I stood there for a moment. Then I went and sat down and ate every bite.
At six-fifteen, a package arrived at the front door. There was no knock, no doorbell. Aunt Mirabel found it when she opened the door to bring in the milk delivery. A plain brown padded envelope, addressed to me in handwriting I did not recognize.
She carried it to the sitting room and held it out.
Benjamin took it first and checked it carefully before giving it to me.
Inside was a small audio recording device. Old, scratched, with a piece of tape on the side and a date. The same kind Patricia had brought to the coffee shop but this one was different.
There was no note, no name and no return address.
Benjamin pressed play.
Sandra's voice filled the room, older than the other recording. It was weaker but the words were unmistakable.
She was describing the night I was born. The same story, but this time she went further than she had gone before. She named Sylvanus Valentine clearly and without hesitation. She described the money, the papers, the arrangement.
And then she said one more name.
A name that was not Sylvanus.
A name that made Benjamin go pale for the first time since I had met him.
The recording stopped.
The room was completely silent.
I looked at my eldest brother's face, and for the first time since that stranger had stood outside the Williams gate waiting for me, he looked frightened.
Not for himself…for me instead.
- Writer
