Chapter 10 - The Baby Broker
The fake Douglas number was a prepaid line.
It had been activated four months earlier near Dr. Crest’s clinic.
Lauren looked like someone had removed the floor beneath her.
“He never said that?”
Mark had arrived and was standing across from her with his jacket still on.
“No.”
“The voting shares?”
“No.”
“His seventieth birthday?”
“He’s seventy-two, Lauren.”
She covered her mouth.
I watched her realize how thoroughly she had allowed herself to be manipulated.
Mark’s anger was quieter than Ethan’s.
“You didn’t call me because some mystery number told you a child was waiting for you?”
“Your dad’s contact photo appeared.”
“Anyone can copy a photo.”
“I know that now.”
“And Rachel? Ethan? You couldn’t ask either of them?”
Lauren whispered, “I was afraid they’d say no.”
Mark stared at her.
“That should have been your answer.”
He walked out.
Lauren folded into the chair.
No one comforted her.
Detective Ortiz’s team raided New Path Family Services that afternoon.
The “office” was two rented rooms above a tax preparation business. The waiting area held adoption brochures, fertility magazines, and framed photographs of smiling parents with babies.
Most of the photographs had been taken from social media.
In a locked cabinet, police found blank birth affidavits, forged notary seals, hospital wristbands, prepaid phones, and folders marked with women’s first names.
One folder said LAUREN.
Another said RACHEL.
There were twelve others.
By evening, federal agents joined the investigation.
“This is bigger than a family kidnapping,” Ortiz told us. “Crest appears to have been identifying vulnerable couples through fertility treatment. Marissa acted as a broker. Patricia gave them hospital access.”
“What happened to the babies?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
My arms tightened around Rose.
Lauren looked at the floor.
“Did they steal babies for people like me?”
Ortiz answered carefully.
“In some cases, they may have created fake emergency placements. In others, they may have manipulated mothers into signing documents they didn’t understand. We’re still sorting it out.”
Ethan asked the question he had been avoiding.
“And my mother?”
Ortiz looked at him.
“She was a client.”
“Only a client?”
“We found payments totaling seventy-eight thousand dollars over five months.”
Diane had paid far more than the forty-thousand-dollar check in the folder.
I felt sick.
“Where did she get that money?”
Ethan’s face hardened.
“My dad left her comfortable, but she doesn’t have that kind of cash sitting around.”
Ortiz placed another document on the table.
A home equity line had been opened against Diane’s house.
Then another.
Then a loan against an investment account Ethan’s father had left for Caleb’s education.
Ethan stared at the amount.
“She borrowed against my son’s college money to steal his sister?”
That was the moment something in him finally broke.
He sat down, put his face in his hands, and cried.
Caleb walked over and hugged him around the neck.
“I don’t need college yet,” he said.
Ethan laughed through tears and held him tighter.
Then Ortiz’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her expression changed.
“They found Marissa.”
“Where?”
“Bus terminal.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Did she have anything?”
Ortiz looked at me.
“A passport, twenty-three thousand dollars in cash... and a photograph of your three daughters taken before you reached the recovery room.”
On the back, one word had been written beside Rose.
SOLD.
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