Chapter 5 - THE DEAD MAN’S PHONE
I answered with shaking fingers.
No one spoke.
I heard breathing.
Slow.
Uneven.
Then a man whispered, “Don’t trust the agents.”
The line went dead.
Agent Brooks took the phone.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
But I did.
Or I thought I did.
My father’s voice had lived in old birthday videos and voicemail recordings I played when I missed him.
The voice on the phone sounded older.
Weaker.
Still his.
“That number was disconnected thirteen years ago,” I said.
Mercer began tracing the call.
Brooks watched my face.
“You believe your father is alive?”
“My mother said he drowned.”
“Was a body recovered?”
“No.”
She said the lake current carried him away.
There had been a memorial.
An empty casket.
My mother cried into Garrett’s father’s shoulder.
Garrett attended the service even though I did not know him yet.
I remembered him telling me that years later.
A strange coincidence.
Now nothing felt accidental.
Mercer looked up from his laptop.
“The call originated inside the hospital.”
Brooks scanned the room.
“Lock down the floor.”
Security checked stairwells, storage rooms, and service corridors.
No one found the caller.
At midnight, a nurse brought me a fresh hospital gown.
A folded paper fell from inside it.
I opened it.
A handwritten map showed the hospital basement.
One room was circled.
ARCHIVE COLD STORAGE.
Below it were five words.
YOUR FATHER NEVER LEFT MICHIGAN.
I showed Brooks.
She called for backup.
I refused to stay behind.
Dr. Bennett objected.
My blood pressure was unstable.
My arm needed surgery.
My pregnancy required monitoring.
But the thought of my father alive somewhere beneath the hospital made stillness impossible.
They moved me in the wheelchair with a portable fetal monitor attached.
Mateo joined us near the service elevator.
“You should be upstairs,” Brooks told him.
“I know the basement.”
The elevator descended.
The air grew colder.
When the doors opened, the corridor smelled of bleach and damp concrete.
Mateo pushed my wheelchair slowly.
Agent Mercer checked each door.
Cold Storage was locked.
The keycard system showed it had not been opened in nine years.
Mateo used a maintenance override.
The door clicked.
Inside were shelves of old radiology films and sealed archive boxes.
At the back stood a hospital bed.
Empty.
Still warm.
A heart monitor beside it had been disconnected moments earlier.
On the pillow lay a photograph.
My father stood beside Garrett.
The picture had been taken recently.
My father’s hair was gray.
His face was thin.
But alive.
Garrett had one arm around him.
Both men stared at the camera.
On the back, someone had written:
HE DIDN’T MARRY YOU FOR THE TRUST.
I turned the photograph over again.
“What else could he want?”
Mateo pointed toward the floor.
A thin trail of blood led behind the shelves.
Mercer followed it.
He found a hidden door.
Beyond it was a narrow medical corridor connecting the hospital to an older research building.
We moved through the darkness.
Halfway down, my phone vibrated.
A video arrived from Garrett.
He stood in a dim room beside an elderly man tied to a chair.
My father.
Garrett smiled into the camera.
“Withdraw your statement, Elena.”
I gripped the phone.
“Dad?”
The man lifted his head.
His lips moved.
Garrett leaned closer to the camera.
“You have one hour.”
Then my father spoke.
“Don’t save me.”
Garrett’s smile vanished.
May you like
My father looked directly into the lens.
“Save your baby from what they put inside her.”
