Rain fell rudely against the boarded windows of Whispers & Pages, the storm rhythmically matching the erratic flash of the backup generator. Lena laid her palm against Ryan's small back as he peered with intensity into Matthew's barcode tattoo, the black ink glistening under the whispering eye of the magnifying glass. The numbers were *113-1989-CB*, as per the orphanage log entry, but it was the logo below the numbers that made Ryan's hands tremble: a snake coiled around a blueprint, the seal of Calloway Biotech.
"They branded him." His voice was raw. He'd seen scars like that in his father's journals-codes for experimental subjects. James Bennett had scratched DO NOT APPROVE across the proposals of the biotech division just a few months before his death.
Matthew giggled, kicking his legs against the antique settee tying him down with silk bookbinding cords. "Uncle Charles said I was special. The medicine made me quiet, but sometimes..." His pupils suddenly dilated; black swallowed hazel. "Sometimes I remember the fires."
Lena's stomach lurched as she connected the dots: Charles had not simply stolen a child. He had turned the grandson of Margaret Carter into a moving experiment-a safeguard against her ever talking. The orphanage, the false death records, the biotech facility masquerading as a seaside clinic-all threads in a tapestry woven with cruelty.
Ryan's phone buzzed with blueprints sent in by Sophie of what used to be the Calloway Biotech wing. Zooming in, the basement layout showed a web of tunnels leading straight into—
"The marina." Lena hated that her nails were digging into her palms. "That was how Charles transported the children without being seen."
A crash echoed beneath them in the bookstore cellar. Matthew's head snapped toward the sound. "She's here."
Darkness swallowed the lights.
In the stifling blackness, Lena felt Ryan's breath against her ear: "The tunnels. They've been under us this whole time."
Glass broke above them. A heavy footfall creaked across the ceiling-not Sophie.
Matthew began to hum Rock-a-Bye Baby and continued until the first gunshot ripped through the floor, splintering the scream.
(Cliffhanger: The cellar door burst open with Tom's mother, holding a syringe with the same sedative that had destroyed Matthew's mind.)