Chapter 3 - Camera 4B
The room exploded.
“You hired someone?” Ethan shouted.
Lauren shook her head so hard her earrings swung.
“No. Mom did. I swear.”
Diane threw the ice pack onto the chair.
“I hired a consultant.”
“A consultant who carries newborns in laundry bags?” I said.
Diane looked at me with pure irritation, as if I were making a scene at brunch.
“You don’t understand what Lauren has been through.”
I laughed once. It came out ugly.
“I nearly bled to death four hours ago, and one of my babies is missing. Try me.”
Lauren started crying.
For three years, she and her husband Mark had gone through fertility treatments, two failed embryo transfers, one miscarriage, and a private adoption that collapsed after the birth mother changed her mind. I knew the pain had hollowed her out. I had sat beside her on my kitchen floor while she sobbed into my shoulder.
But grief did not explain a stolen infant.
Detective Ortiz asked, “What exactly did Ms. Vale promise?”
Lauren wiped her face.
“She said she handled private placements. She knew mothers who wanted discreet adoptions. She said there were ways to avoid months of waiting.”
“Legal ways?”
Lauren hesitated.
Diane answered for her.
“Efficient ways.”
Ortiz turned to the officer.
“Separate them.”
Diane stood. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
Two security guards escorted Diane into the family consultation room. Lauren was taken to an empty patient room across the hall.
Ethan stayed with me.
The detective pulled a chair beside the bed.
“Rachel, did anyone ask you about adoption during your pregnancy?”
“No.”
“Did Diane ever joke about Lauren taking one of the triplets?”
I stared at her.
“She didn’t joke.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
At my baby shower, Diane had said, “Three girls are excessive. Lauren would make a wonderful mother to one of them.” Everyone laughed because the alternative was too uncomfortable.
At Thanksgiving, she told Lauren she should pick the baby name she liked best.
Two weeks before delivery, she sent me an article about “open family adoption.”
I had blocked her for three days.
Ortiz wrote everything down.
Then the hospital administrator returned.
“Detective, you need to see this.”
She placed a printed access log on the table.
Marissa Vale had entered the maternity floor at 5:29 using a temporary staff badge assigned to a nurse named Patricia Shaw.
“Where’s Shaw?” Ortiz asked.
“Not here. She called out sick.”
“Home address?”
“Security is getting it.”
Another officer rushed in.
“We checked the service elevator camera. Vale went to level two, then the parking structure.”
“With the bag?” Ethan asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t the infant alarm trigger?”
The administrator looked sick.
“Because someone disabled Rose’s electronic tag before she left the room.”
Diane knew enough to open the bracelet.
Marissa knew enough to bypass the alarm.
And someone inside the hospital had given them access.
I looked toward the glass wall of the nursery.
Ava and Lily slept under warm lights, completely unaware that their sister was gone.
Caleb climbed onto the edge of my bed.
“Mom?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Grandma had another thing.”
Ortiz leaned forward.
“What thing?”
“A yellow envelope.”
Diane had arrived carrying no purse.
“What did it say?” Ethan asked.
Caleb thought hard.
“I only saw the big words.”
He sounded them out slowly.
“Consent... to... surrender.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Detective Ortiz went very still.
Then the door opened and an officer walked in carrying Diane’s coat.
“We found this in the inside pocket.”
He held up a yellow envelope.
My name was typed across the front.
Inside was a notarized document stating that I had voluntarily surrendered one of my newborn daughters to Lauren Hart.
At the bottom was my signature.
Except I had never signed it.
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