Chapter 32 - The Empty Bed and the Painted Box
The ride to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital was a blur of flashing red emergency lights and the deafening howl of sirens tearing through the rain-slicked streets of the city. Daniel refused the ambulance gurney, demanding instead to ride in the lead tactical Suburban. Every jolt of the vehicle sent white-hot spikes through his newly stitched shoulder, but he felt none of it. A father’s primal dread had replaced every nerve ending in his body with raw electricity.
When the convoy screeched to a halt outside the pediatric wing, the entire hospital was bathed in the sickly orange glow of auxiliary emergency backup lights. Chaos reigned in the lobby. Orderlies and nurses rushed through the corridors with flashlights, while uniformed police officers barricaded the stairwells.
Daniel sprinted through the double doors of Room 414, Thorne trailing him with weapon drawn.
The door swung open, and Daniel stopped dead in his tracks.
The room was freezing. The window leading out to the fire escape was wide open, the rain-soaked lace curtains whipping violently in the cold wind. On the linoleum floor lay two federal agents, unconscious, their zip-cuffs severed and their sidearms missing. A syringe containing traces of veterinary tranquilizer rolled on the tile floor beside an overturned IV pole.
The bed was empty.
The small blue blankets Mason loved were scattered across the floor. Daniel stepped into the room, his knees trembling violently, his breath catching in his throat.
“Mason!” Daniel shouted, his voice cracking with unbearable anguish. “Mason!”
There was no answer. Only the rhythmic, mocking drip of rain falling from the window sill onto the radiator.
“Clear the floor! Seal all exits!” Thorne bellowed into his radio, stepping out into the hallway to coordinate a dragnet. “Check the parking structures! Check every vehicle within a three-mile radius!”
Daniel approached the empty bed. On the pillow, neatly centered where Mason’s head should have been resting, was a small, lacquered wooden music box—an antique, painted with faded gold trim and inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Daniel recognized it instantly. It belonged to Vanessa. It was the same music box she kept on her vanity mirror, the one she would wind up whenever she locked Mason in the dark pantry, telling him the chime was the sound of his mother’s soul abandoning him.
With shaking hands, Daniel reached out and lifted the lid.
The tiny brass cylinder turned, playing a hollow, distorted rendition of Brahms’ Lullaby. Inside the velvet compartment lay a single photograph and a folded piece of yellowed paper.
Daniel grabbed the photo. It was a polaroid taken less than twenty minutes ago. It showed Mason, fast asleep in his oversized dinosaur pajamas, buckled into the leather back seat of an unfamiliar black sedan. In his tiny hands was Emily’s teddy bear.
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Underneath the photograph was the note, written in Vanessa’s frantic, sharp, venomous handwriting:
*“You took my mother’s freedom, Daniel. You took our family’s name, our money, and our home. Did you really think you could win? If you want to see your son draw his next breath, tell the feds to release Diane at the bridge before dawn. Come alone. If a single badge follows you, the boy goes into the river in a locked trunk. Let’s see what kind of father you really are.”*
