The Boy Wearing Her Missing Son's Necklace

Chapter 4: Number 12

Daniel led them through the café kitchen and into the alley.

They ran while the men searched the dark dining room behind them. Ben knew which streets had cameras and which doors were usually unlocked. He had been trained to move unseen.

That broke Evelyn's heart more than anything else.

Daniel took them to an abandoned office he once used near the hospital. Inside an old safe were files he had stolen after Alex disappeared.

"I kept them because I knew one day I would have to confess," he said.

Evelyn opened the first folder.

Photographs of children.

Numbers instead of names.

Medical reports.

Transfer payments.

Then she found a photograph marked Subject 12.

Alex.

Older than the baby she remembered, but unmistakably her son.

He had Evelyn's eyes.

Ben pointed at the picture.

"That's him."

Evelyn pressed the photo to her chest.

Daniel found an address hidden inside the transfer records. An old children's recovery center outside the city, officially closed four years earlier.

"Hale still owns the land," he said.

They called a federal investigator Daniel had secretly contacted months before. The investigator warned them not to approach the facility alone.

Evelyn refused to wait.

"My child has already waited six years."

They reached the center shortly before midnight.

The building appeared empty, but Ben led them to a concealed entrance behind the laundry room.

Downstairs, they found locked rooms.

Empty beds.

Discarded wristbands.

Then a weak voice called through the darkness.

"Ben?"

Ben ran toward it.

A thin boy stood behind a glass security door.

He looked about nine years old. His hair was too long, his face bruised, but the faint mark near his ear was still there.

Evelyn dropped to her knees.

"Alex."

The boy stared at her.

He did not smile.

Instead, he stepped back and whispered,

"You shouldn't have come. Victor wanted you here."

The security door slammed shut behind them.

And the lights came on.