Chapter 13
We reached the hospital three minutes too late.
Luis was shouting in the hallway.
Rosa was sobbing.
Elena was gone.
Two social workers had taken her under an emergency court order signed by Judge Evelyn Hart.
Police could not stop them.
Hospital staff could not refuse.
Victor had used paper where guns failed.
I stood in the hallway while Luis grabbed my jacket.
“You promised.”
“I know.”
“You promised me!”
“I know.”
Rosa slapped my chest with both hands.
“My baby was scared. She was calling for me.”
“I will get her back.”
“Words don’t bring children home.”
She was right.
So I stopped talking.
Harris traced the transport vehicle.
It was supposed to go to a county facility.
It never arrived.
The driver was found unconscious under an overpass.
The social workers were real.
The men who took Elena from them were not.
Victor had used the judge to pull her into the open.
Then he stole her again.
This time, there was no ransom call.
No taunt.
No game.
That scared me more.
We hit every property tied to Victor.
Empty.
We squeezed every old Salerno contact.
Nothing.
At sunset, Bruno started scratching at Elena’s hospital blanket.
It had been left on the bed.
He sniffed it, then pulled toward the elevator.
Tony frowned.
“You think he can track from here?”
“I think he knows something we don’t.”
Bruno led us downstairs.
Out a side exit.
Across the ambulance bay.
To a service road.
There, behind a dumpster, he found the little brown dog.
Nico.
The dog was trembling, bleeding from one paw, but alive.
Around his neck was a new collar.
A black one.
Attached was a tiny recorder.
Tony pressed play.
Elena’s voice came through.
“Mr. Dante, I’m trying to be brave.”
My chest split.
Then Victor’s voice.
“Tell him what happens if he brings police.”
Elena cried.
“He kills Daddy.”
Luis went white.
Then another voice spoke.
A woman.
Cold.
Familiar from court recordings.
Judge Hart.
“Victor, enough. Move the child tonight.”
I looked at Harris.
“Where?”
The recorder crackled.
Victor answered.
“The old church.”
Sister Agnes gasped behind us.
“There are six old churches.”
“No,” I said.
May you like
I understood my mother’s ledger now.
“The one where Maria died.”
