Chapter 9 - Northbridge
The tactical team entered through the east wing.
The first floor contained empty offices, rusted beds, and medical cabinets stripped of labels.
Fresh footprints marked the dust.
Generators hummed beneath the building.
Northbridge had been designed to look abandoned from the outside while remaining active underground.
We found the elevator behind a locked storage room.
It required a code.
I entered the numbers Rebecca arranged in her puzzle.
Seventeen.
Twelve.
Thirty-one.
The doors opened.
Rebecca had known about Northbridge all along.
The elevator descended two floors beneath the facility.
Mara kept me behind the agents.
The corridor below was brightly lit.
Security cameras covered every door.
An alarm sounded the moment we stepped out.
A voice ordered everyone to remain still.
The entry team disabled the cameras and advanced.
The first room held financial records.
The second contained medication.
The third contained six patients.
Some were elderly.
Two were veterans listed as having moved overseas.
All appeared heavily sedated.
A medic checked them.
“They need immediate evacuation.”
We continued.
At the end of the corridor, a steel door stood open.
Beyond it was a treatment room.
Celia sat strapped to a chair.
Her gold dress had been replaced with a gray hospital gown.
Her face was bruised.
An intravenous line ran into her arm.
Dr. Adrian Cole stood behind her holding a syringe against her neck.
He was in his sixties, with neat white hair and the calm expression of a man who believed credentials made him untouchable.
“Lower your weapons,” he said.
Mara kept hers raised.
“Step away from her.”
Cole smiled.
“You have no idea what you interrupted.”
Celia’s eyes found mine.
“Elise.”
Her voice was weak.
“I told you not to come.”
“You have never been good at giving orders.”
Cole pressed the needle closer.
“One injection will stop her heart.”
“You kill her, you lose your only leverage,” Mara said.
“I have spent thirty years watching frightened families beg me to solve inconvenient problems.”
“I understand leverage better than you.”
He looked at me.
“Your brother was much less disciplined.”
My vision narrowed.
“You treated Andrew.”
“My father treated him.”
“I observed.”
“He was not unstable.”
Cole shrugged.
“He was angry.”
“His father wanted him controlled.”
“Medicine often exists between those two facts.”
“You murdered him.”
“No.”
“Andrew refused to stop fighting the medication.”
“His heart failed.”
Celia began to cry.
“Dad told me Andrew attacked Mom.”
Cole laughed softly.
“Grant told everyone what they needed to hear.”
I took one step forward.
Mara warned me to stop.
Cole’s eyes remained on mine.
“Your mother discovered the arrangement when she found Andrew’s original file.”
“She threatened Grant.”
“So he made her look confused.”
“She was dying.”
“That made the story easier.”
The rage inside me became strangely quiet.
“Did you accelerate her death?”
Celia stared at Cole.
He smiled again.
“I adjusted her comfort medication.”
My sister made a sound I had never heard from another human being.
It was grief stripped of language.
I moved before Mara could stop me.
Cole turned the syringe toward Celia’s intravenous line.
A shot rang out.
The syringe shattered in his hand.
Mara had fired.
Agents rushed him.
Cole fell beneath them, screaming about his hand.
I reached Celia and tore the restraints free.
She collapsed against me.
For several seconds, we held each other on the cold floor.
“I am sorry,” she whispered.
“So am I.”
“I helped them bring you there.”
“You also recorded them.”
“I was afraid.”
“I know.”
She gripped my jacket.
“Elise, Dad is not at his attorney’s office.”
“Where is he?”
“He knows about Northbridge.”
“He sent Cole here to destroy the records.”
Mara heard her.
“Where did Grant go?”
Celia looked toward the corridor.
“To the gala hotel.”
“He said Mom left something inside the ballroom that could destroy all of them.”
The hidden flash drive had contained one video.
But perhaps my mother had planted more than one message.
May you like
My father had returned to the Fairmont Grand.
And he was prepared to burn the evidence before we could reach it.
