Chapter 5 - The Husband Behind the Glass
Snow began falling as they crossed the Wisconsin state line.
Daniel drove an old sedan registered to one of his former clients. Elena sat in the passenger seat, tracking the route on a paper map because they had shut down every phone.
Grace remained in the back, staring at the translucent strip.
Only one Nathan can leave.
She did not know whether it was a warning, a threat, or an instruction.
The Ashcroft property stood on the eastern edge of Lake Geneva behind twelve acres of wooded land. According to Daniel’s records, the building had operated as a private rehabilitation hospital before being sold to a holding company.
They parked half a mile away.
At 1:43 a.m., Grace, Daniel, and Elena entered through an abandoned service tunnel Vance had marked on an old blueprint.
The tunnel led to the hospital basement.
The building smelled of disinfectant and damp concrete. Several fluorescent lights flickered overhead. Despite the late hour, machinery hummed behind closed doors.
They found a directory near the stairwell.
The sixth floor was labeled Cognitive Recovery.
Room 613 was not listed.
They used the service stairs.
On the third floor, Grace heard wheels moving along a corridor. The three of them pressed against the wall as two medical staff members pushed a covered transport bed past the stairwell.
Grace could not see the patient’s face.
One worker spoke quietly.
“The Halden transfer was moved forward.”
Her heart stopped.
“When?”
“Two-ten.”
They continued climbing.
At the sixth floor, the stairwell door required an electronic key. Grace removed the translucent strip and held it against the scanner.
A green light appeared.
The door unlocked.
Daniel looked at her.
“Your father planned this.”
“No,” Grace said. “Someone planned for me to come tonight.”
The sixth-floor corridor was empty.
Room numbers progressed from 601 to 612.
There was no 613.
At the end of the hallway, Grace noticed a section of wall with no handrail. She pressed the strip against another hidden scanner.
A panel opened.
Behind it was a narrow observation room.
A glass wall separated them from a clinical chamber containing a bed, a table, and one chair.
A thin dark-haired man stood beside the window.
He turned.
Grace forgot how to breathe.
He looked older than Nathan. His cheeks were hollow, his hair streaked with gray, and a scar crossed the left side of his forehead.
But his eyes were the same eyes she remembered from before the accident.
Not merely the same color.
The same uncertainty when he was frightened.
The same slight narrowing of his left eyelid.
The man approached the glass.
“Grace?”
She placed both hands against it.
He began crying silently.
Daniel searched for the door controls while Elena watched the corridor.
Grace pressed the communication button.
The speaker crackled.
The man’s voice was rough from disuse.
“You cut your hair.”
Grace touched the ends of her shoulder-length hair.
She had worn it below her waist when Nathan disappeared.
“What did my mother play on the piano?” she asked.
His face crumpled.
“Blue Moon, but only the first verse because she always forgot the bridge.”
Grace closed her eyes.
The man on the other side of the glass was Nathan.
Or he possessed a memory the replacement had never known.
“What happened after the accident?” she asked.
“They pulled me from the car. I woke up in a hospital room with a man asking questions about you. I thought he was a police officer. Then they moved me here.”
“Why did they keep you?”
“To teach him.”
“Who?”
Nathan looked toward the chamber door.
“The other me.”
A buzzer sounded.
The glass door unlocked.
Grace entered.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then Nathan stepped forward and stopped, as though unsure whether he had permission to touch her.
Grace closed the distance and embraced him.
He felt impossibly thin.
His hands trembled against her shoulders.
“I tried to remember your face every morning,” he whispered. “They told me you had accepted him. They showed me photographs.”
Grace pulled back.
“What photographs?”
“You and him. Vacations. Anniversaries. Your father’s funeral.”
Pain moved through his expression.
“He lived my life better than I did.”
“No,” Grace said. “He performed it.”
An alarm began sounding in the corridor.
Elena appeared at the observation-room entrance.
“We need to go.”
Daniel found a wheelchair, but Nathan refused it.
“There are others,” he said.
“We cannot rescue an entire facility,” Daniel replied.
“You don’t understand. The others include people declared dead, missing, or mentally incompetent. If Ashcroft moves them, they disappear forever.”
Grace heard doors opening throughout the sixth floor.
Footsteps approached.
Nathan gripped her wrist.
“Room 609.”
“What is there?”
“Your father’s last witness.”
Grace looked toward the corridor.
Daniel shook his head.
“We have minutes, perhaps less.”
Nathan’s expression became desperate.
“Samuel did not fall down the stairs. Someone brought him here before he died.”
Grace felt the floor shift beneath her.
“My father was in this building?”
“He left something in Room 609. He said you would know what to do with it.”
The footsteps drew closer.
Elena looked around the corner.
“Security.”
Grace made her decision.
“Daniel, take Nathan to the tunnel.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You are getting him out. That is why we came.”
She turned to Elena.
“Go with them.”
Elena pulled a small canister of defensive spray from her bag.
“Absolutely not.”
Grace knew arguing would waste time.
Together, they ran toward Room 609.
The door opened with the translucent strip.
Inside stood a desk, a wall of recording equipment, and a locked metal cabinet.
Grace placed the strip against the cabinet’s scanner.
Nothing happened.
Elena searched the desk.
“There’s no keypad.”
Grace remembered her father’s recording.
Winterglass is not a file. It is a person.
She said the name aloud.
“Evelyn Shaw.”
The cabinet unlocked.
Inside were dozens of drives and a handwritten ledger.
On top rested a video cassette labeled FOR GRACE.
Security officers reached the corridor.
Elena grabbed the ledger while Grace took the cassette and as many drives as she could carry.
They turned toward the door.
A dark-haired man in medical clothing stood there.
He resembled Lieutenant Vance.
“Leaving already?” he asked.
Grace knew who he was.
Vance’s brother.
The director of the facility.
May you like
He looked at the translucent strip in her hand and smiled.
“Thank you for bringing the final key.”
