Chapter 10 - The Boy in the Photograph
Claire instructed Natalie to come to an abandoned adoption office outside Austin.
No police.
No tracker.
Natalie went anyway.
Ortiz secretly followed at a distance.
Inside the ruined building, children’s height marks remained on one wall.
Old toys sat beneath dust.
Claire waited in the records room.
She placed a photograph on the table.
A teenage boy stood beside Mercer.
Natalie recognized Evan immediately.
The photograph had been taken two years after his disappearance.
“He was alive,” she whispered.
Claire nodded.
Mercer discovered Evan sleeping in his car after running away from an abusive foster placement.
Instead of returning him, Mercer sold his identity through the adoption network.
Evan was moved under a false name.
“Where is he now?”
Claire smiled faintly.
“That depends on whether you give me the Mercy files.”
“You already tried to destroy them.”
“I need one page Andrew removed.”
Natalie did not know which page.
Claire claimed it contained payment records tied to Judge Price and Thomas Monroe.
“Thomas didn’t just lose his granddaughter,” Claire said. “He paid to make her disappear.”
Natalie stared at her.
“Why would he do that?”
“Because Sarah refused to tell him who Ashley’s father was.”
Thomas feared the father’s family would claim part of Monroe Aerospace.
He ordered the infant quietly removed until the paternity issue could be controlled.
Claire was supposed to arrange a closed adoption.
Instead, she sold Ashley’s location to both sides.
Then she vanished with the money.
Natalie felt disgusted.
“You destroyed every family around you.”
Claire leaned closer.
“I survived men who believed they could own everyone.”
“You became worse than them.”
A gunshot shattered the window.
Claire fell.
Blood spread across her shoulder.
Mercer stood outside with a rifle.
Natalie dragged Claire behind a cabinet.
Claire pressed a key card into her hand.
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“Find Locker 17,” she gasped. “Evan is waiting.”
👉 Claire had finally revealed where Natalie might find her brother, but Mercer was already inside the building to silence them both.
