Someone’s son.
Left in the dark because he had become inconvenient.
Then the officer on the radio spoke again, voice suddenly strained.
“Detective, there’s something else.”
Ellison lifted the radio slowly.
“Go ahead.”
“There’s a second room.”
“What’s in it?”
A long pause followed.
Too long.
When the officer answered, his voice had changed completely.
“Cameras. Monitors. Hard drives. Looks like surveillance equipment.”
Ellison looked at me.
I looked back.
Then the radio crackled one more time.
“And Detective?”
“Yes?”
“You need to see this yourself. One of the screens is still recording.”
I didn’t wait for permission.
I turned and ran back into the hospital.
Not toward the exits.
Toward Lily.
Because suddenly I understood what Varrick had meant.
This wasn’t about his grandson.
Preston was cruel. Violent. Protected.
But he was not the center of the machine.
He was only one of its spoiled little products.
I reached Lily’s room and found a nurse adjusting her IV. Lily’s eye opened when I came in. She looked exhausted, terrified, and trapped inside her own broken body.
I sat beside her and took her hand.
“They found Ethan,” I whispered.
Her fingers tightened.
I could not bring myself to say he was dead.
But she knew.
A sound escaped her throat, small and broken.
“Don’t try,” I said. “Don’t move.”
She stared at me with that one open eye.
Then, slowly, she lifted her other hand.
The nurse started forward. “She shouldn’t—”
“Wait,” I said.
Lily’s fingers trembled as she pointed toward the evidence bag on the chair.
Her blue hoodie.
I grabbed it carefully.
“What is it?”
She pointed again.
Not at the hoodie.
At the front pocket.
I looked inside.
Empty.
Then she shook her head as much as the bandages allowed and pointed lower.
The seam.
I turned the hoodie over.