Chapter 24 - Blood on the Safehouse Door
Emily stood up from the wet asphalt, all trace of grief instantly hardening into lethal motherly resolve.
"Give me a gun," Emily said, looking directly into Liam's eyes.
Daniel grabbed her shoulders, his voice thick with concern. "Emily, listen to me—"
"No, Daniel! You listen to me!" Emily snapped, her eyes burning like twin fires in the dark.
"That monster slapped me across the face when I protected our daughter from her pond," Emily whispered, every word sharp as razor wire. "Now she has Sophie again."
"I will tear that entire sanatorium down with my bare hands before I let her hurt our child," Emily vowed.
Liam opened his tactical jacket, pulling an extra semiautomatic pistol from his holster and handing it to Emily without hesitation.
"She knows how to shoot, Daniel," Liam said quietly. "Her father was a police captain. Don't underestimate her."
Daniel looked at his wife, seeing the fierce, unbreakable lioness within her.
He nodded slowly, reaching down to pick up a discarded steel wrench from the warehouse alley.
"The Blackwood Sanatorium was shut down twenty years ago," Daniel said, turning to Liam. "It sits on private Vance estate land near the coast."
"It was an asylum for wealthy socialites who suffered 'nervous breakdowns,'" Liam added grimly, loading a fresh magazine into his sidearm.
"And it was entirely funded by Evelyn's personal offshore trust," Daniel realized with sickening clarity.
They commandeered an unmarked service van from the loading dock and raced toward the northern coastline.
The rain turned into a blinding downpour, lightning tearing open the black sky above the highway.
As they drove, Emily examined the contents of Daniel's father's journal under the dim interior dome light.
"Look at this," Emily said, pointing to a handwritten diagram inside the back cover.
It showed the architectural layout of the Blackwood Sanatorium's underground hydrotherapy ward.
"Hydrotherapy," Daniel repeated, feeling a cold knot of dread tighten around his heart.
"They used ice-cold plunge pools to 'treat' hysterical women," Emily read, her voice shaking with disgust. "Evelyn didn't just lock Victoria away, Daniel."
"She tortured her with water," Emily whispered in horror. "That's why Evelyn threw Sophie into the pond."
"It was a ritual," Daniel gasped, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles bled. "A sick, twisted repetition of what she did to Victoria."
Suddenly, the van's dashboard navigation screen flickered and died.
May you like
Ahead in the darkness, the iron gates of Blackwood Sanatorium loomed through the storm like the ribcage of an ancient beast.
The front gates stood wide open, draped in heavy rusted chains that had been snapped in half.
