Chapter 34: The Wait

"She's not moving."

The words hit me like a slap. I scrambled up onto the wing, scraping my hands on the rivets. Mark was inside the cabin, his hands hovering over Clara's slumped form.

"Is she breathing?" I demanded, squeezing past him into the narrow aisle.

The cabin was opulent—cream leather seats, mahogany trim, a bar stocked with crystal decanters. Clara looked tiny in the wide seat, her head lolling to the side, her mouth slightly open.

I pressed my fingers to her neck. Her skin was cool, clammy.

A pulse. Weak, thready, but there.

"She's alive," I said, sagging with relief. "She's just... heavily sedated."

"We need to get her out," Mark said. "Before someone comes back."

We unbuckled the straps. Clara was dead weight, her limbs floppy as a rag doll's. Ben climbed up to help, and between the three of us, we managed to lower her onto the wing, then down to the tarmac.

"Put her in the car," I said. "We're going to the hospital."

We laid her across the back seat of the rental car, her head in Leo's lap. Leo stroked her hair, his touch gentle, reverent.

"Is she okay?" he whispered.

"She will be," I said, praying it was true.

We drove back to St. Jude's, the same hospital where I had been born, where Leo had been born, where Alice Miller's body had been sent for cremation. It was the epicenter of the Sterling lies, but it was also the only place with the equipment to save Clara.

I pulled into the emergency bay. Nurses rushed out with a gurney.

"Drug overdose," I told them. "Sedatives. Possible barbiturates."

They whisked her away.

I stood in the fluorescent glare of the ER entrance, my hands shaking. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a cold, hollow exhaustion.

"We need to call the police now," Mark said. "For real this time. We have the box. We have the witnesses. We have everything."

"Not yet," I said. "Edith is still out there. If she knows we have Clara... if she knows her plan failed..."

"She'll run," Ben said.

"Or she'll fight," I said. "And she still has the money."

My phone buzzed.

I looked at the screen. It wasn't a text. It was an email.

From Edith.

*Subject: The Final Ledger.*

I opened it.

There was no text. Just a single attachment. A PDF.

I clicked on it.

It was a scan of a document. A legal document.

*Termination of Parental Rights.*

*Mother: Sarah Sterling.*
*Child: Leo Sterling.*

*Reason: Mental Instability / Substance Abuse / Child Endangerment.*

It was signed. By me.

I stared at the signature. It was perfect. The loop of the S, the sharp cross of the t. It was my signature.

But I had never signed it.

"She forged it," I whispered. "She forged my signature on a surrender form."

I scrolled down. There was a second document attached.

*Custody Order.*

*Granted to: Edith Sterling.*

*Effective Date: Immediately.*

"She didn't just drain the accounts," I said, showing the phone to Mark. "She stole my son."

"But Leo is here," Mark said, pointing to the man sitting in the waiting room chair.

"Not that Leo," I said. "My Leo. The boy in the oncology ward."

I ran to the elevator. "I need to get to the PICU."

The elevator seemed to take hours. When the doors opened on the fourth floor, I sprinted down the hall.

Leo's room was 402.

The door was open.

The bed was empty.

"No," I whispered.

I spun around. A nurse was walking by with a tray of meds.

"Where is he?" I grabbed her arm. "Where is the boy in 402? Leo Sterling?"

She looked startled. "Mrs. Sterling? I thought you knew. His grandmother picked him up twenty minutes ago."

"His grandmother?"

"Yes," the nurse said. "Mrs. Edith Sterling. She had the transfer papers. She said you authorized a move to a private facility in Switzerland."

"Switzerland?" I screamed. "He can't fly! His platelets are too low!"

"She had a medical transport team," the nurse said, backing away from me. "A doctor was with her."

"What doctor?"

"Dr. Aris," she said. "Dr. Aris Thorne."

The world went black at the edges.

Thorne wasn't retired. He wasn't hiding.

He was working for her. Still.

Edith hadn't fled the country. She hadn't gone to ground.

She had come here. While we were chasing the decoy plane, while we were breaking into the bunker... she had walked right into the hospital and taken the only thing I had left.

My son.

My real son.

Or was he?

I thought about the blood tests. The O-Negative blood. The missing genetic markers.

If Leo wasn't my son... and he wasn't Clara's son...

Then who was he?

And why did Edith want him so badly?

I leaned against the wall, sliding down until I hit the floor.

"She took him," I said to the empty air. "She took the wrong Leo."

But then, a terrible thought struck me.

What if she didn't take the wrong one?

What if she took the *right* one?

What if the boy I had raised for eight years... the boy dying of leukemia... wasn't a Sterling at all?

What if he was the final piece of the puzzle?

The piece Edith had been saving for