Chapter 6
I pulled against the restraints.
A contraction tore through me.
My daughter was coming.
Nathan adjusted an intravenous line.
“Do not fight. Stress is dangerous for the baby.”
“You started a fire and kidnapped me.”
“The fire was controlled.”
“Conrad shot my brother.”
“Harrison chose to interfere.”
Judge Voss stood near the door wearing surgical scrubs.
His wife, Elaine, waited beside him.
She looked nervous.
“This wasn’t our agreement,” she whispered.
Nathan ignored her.
Voss touched my stomach.
I turned away in disgust.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Soon, none of this will matter,” he said. “The records will show you abandoned the child.”
“Millions of people know what happened at the courthouse.”
“They saw a domestic dispute. They did not see this.”
A ceiling camera pointed toward the operating table.
I prayed it transmitted somewhere outside the clinic.
Then I noticed its green light was off.
Conrad entered.
“Police found the safe house. Vanessa is cooperating.”
Nathan cursed.
“What about Oliver?”
“Federal custody.”
Elaine stepped backward.
“We should stop.”
Voss grabbed her arm.
“We are not losing another child.”
“She is not ours!”
The words shocked everyone.
Elaine began crying.
“You told me the mother had agreed. You said she changed her mind after we paid.”
Voss slapped her.
“Be quiet.”
He had deceived his own wife.
Elaine struck him back.
Then she ran to my bedside and released one restraint.
Conrad pulled her away.
I freed my other hand and grabbed a metal tray.
I struck Nathan’s arm as he reached for the injection port.
The syringe fell.
Another contraction began.
This one did not stop.
“My baby is coming now.”
Nathan looked at the monitor.
“We need to proceed.”
The operating-room doors burst open.
Harrison entered with blood covering his shoulder.
He was alive.
Detective Hayes and federal agents followed him.
Conrad fired.
Hayes shot the weapon from his hand.
Harrison tackled Voss before the judge could reach me.
Nathan tried to escape through the surgical entrance, but Elaine blocked him.
“You turned my grief into a crime,” she said.
Agents arrested all three men.
A medical team rushed inside.
My daughter, Rose, was born thirty-seven minutes later.
She was small.
She was furious.
And she was safe.
Harrison stood beside my bed with his injured shoulder bandaged.
When the nurse placed Rose against my chest, my brother began to cry.
“You came back,” I whispered.
“A bullet through the shoulder isn’t enough to keep me from meeting my niece.”
Elaine told investigators everything.
She had believed the two-million-dollar payment arranged a legal adoption.
Voss controlled every document she saw.
When she questioned delays, he claimed the birth mother was reconsidering.
Elaine had not known the birth mother was me.
She had not known Richard married me as part of the plan.
Her testimony exposed a judge who had manipulated his wife’s grief while stealing babies from other women.
Then detectives searched the operating room.
Behind one wall, they found a nursery containing six empty bassinets.
Each carried a woman’s name.
One read EMILY CARTER.
Another read SARAH MILLS.
Sarah Mills was the mother found dead after losing custody.
The final bassinet carried a date from nineteen years earlier.
The name beneath it was HARRISON CARTER.
I looked at my brother.
Our mother had always told us he was born at the county hospital.
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According to Vale Medical’s records, Harrison had been transferred through the same illegal program.
My brother was one of the stolen babies.
