Chapter 6 - The Visitor in the Driveway
The interrogation room seemed to shrink. The air grew heavy, pressing down against my chest as Miller’s words echoed off the concrete walls.
"Registered under Sterling Holdings?" I repeated, my voice hollow. I turned slowly to look at Clara.
She wasn't smiling anymore. Her expression was one of grim, vindictive validation.
"I told you," Clara whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "I wasn't trying to hurt them, Arthur. I was hiding them. If I left the front door unlocked, if I let them play in the yard like normal children, the watchers would have taken them. The room with the steel latch... it was the only soundproof, reinforced space in the house where their biometric signatures couldn't be scanned from the street."
I grabbed the edge of the table, my knuckles turning white. "You could have told me! We could have gone to the police! We could have moved!"
"And trusted local authorities against a multi-billion-dollar shadow syndicate?" Clara scoffed bitterly. "They own judges, politicians, and police precincts across three states. The only way to keep our children invisible was to make them look neglected, sickly, and insignificant. No one steals a dying, malnourished baby."
The twisted logic hit me like a physical blow. It was monstrous, it was insane, but in her broken, paranoid mind, she genuinely believed she was acting as a savior.
"Detective Miller," I said, my voice shaking as I turned away from my wife. "Is there any record of this corporation operating in our state?"
Miller tapped her tablet, her screen glowing in the dim room. "Until two hours ago, no. But our cybercrime unit just flagged a series of encrypted data packets transmitted from a router located three blocks away from your suburban residence. The destination IP address leads straight back to a server farm in Seattle registered under the Sterling name."
My stomach plummeted into an abyss. Clara hadn't been imagining things. Or perhaps she had triggered a nightmare she knew was real, and her method of survival had simply metastasized into abuse.
"Arthur," Clara pleaded, reaching across the table and grabbing my wrist. Her fingers were ice-cold. "They’re coming for Tommy. They’ve been watching the house. When you were away on business, I saw someone walking along our fence line with a thermal scanner. That’s why I panicked. That’s why I locked them in the room."
I pulled my arm away from her grip, stepping back toward the door.
"If what you're saying is true," I said, my voice dead and emotionless, "your method of protecting them nearly killed our son. You don't lock innocent children in cages, Clara. Ever."
May you like
"Where are you going?" she cried out as Miller opened the door for me.
"Back to my children," I said over my shoulder. "And if anyone comes anywhere near them, they’ll have to get through me first."
