Chapter 47: The Bait

 

The words settled over the chapel like dust.

“Grandfather told them to bring Gabriel here?” Rhys asked.

Theo shook his head. “He said to tell him his mother was waiting. He didn't say where.”

Elara looked toward the corridor. Sylvie was two floors away, seated in a room any visitor could find if they knew whom to ask for.

“Brandt,” she said. “Someone brought Sylvie to this hospital under false pretenses. What if the point wasn't to question her?”

Brandt's face changed. He lifted his radio. “Check on Mrs. Laurent. Now.”

Rhys started for the doors.

Elara caught his hand. “Don't run ahead of the officers.”

“Gabriel might be coming.”

“Then the safest thing we can do for both of them is stop making decisions in a panic.”

Rhys stared at her. For an instant, she thought he would pull away.

Instead, he nodded.

They followed Brandt into the corridor.

 

Sylvie was still in the consultation room, but she was no longer alone.

A young nurse stood beside her wheelchair holding a paper cup. The woman looked up when four people entered, startled enough to spill a little water.

“Who asked you to bring that?” Brandt demanded.

“Mrs. Laurent requested water.”

“I asked for a sealed bottle,” Sylvie said.

The nurse blinked. “I was told to bring this.”

“By whom?” Elara asked.

“A man at reception. He said he was with the family.”

Elara moved closer. The cup smelled of plastic and faintly of lemon disinfectant. Nothing proved its contents were unsafe, but Sylvie's hands had begun to shake.

“Please don't drink it,” Elara said.

Brandt took the cup by its rim and handed it to an officer. “Preserve this. Identify whoever gave that instruction.”

The nurse left with another officer, looking close to tears.

“I didn't touch it,” Sylvie whispered.

“Good,” Rhys said.

She looked at him, then at the wooden horse in his hand.

“Gabriel always believed you'd come for him,” she said.

Rhys lowered his eyes.

“I didn't know he needed me.”

Sylvie reached toward him but stopped before touching his sleeve. “Children should never have had to rescue each other.”

Elara watched the words land. He had spent the morning searching for proof of a brother. Now he was being given something harder: someone else's memory of himself.

 

Priya arranged for Sylvie to be moved to a guarded ward under a restricted visitor list. Brandt took her statement before the transfer.

When they were alone in the stairwell, Rhys rested his forehead against the cold window.

“If Gabriel comes here, they'll be waiting.”

“Yes.”

“And if we hide her, he may think we took her.”

Elara thought of the letter, the locker receipt, the five knocks. Each clue had been delivered through a stranger. None had allowed Gabriel to speak freely.

“Then we give him a way to find her without exposing her,” she said.

“How?”

“Something only the boy who knew you would recognize.”

Rhys opened his palm.

The wooden horse lay there, small and battered.

Elara took a photograph of the five dents beneath it. “We can ask Brandt to publish a controlled appeal through the investigators. No location. No mention of Sylvie's room. Just the photograph and a secure number.”

“He could be watching the news.”

“Or he could be hiding from it. Let him choose.”

Rhys watched her for a moment. “You always find the one thing I can't buy.”

“What?”

“A choice that belongs to someone else.”

She looked away before he could see how deeply that reached her.

 

An hour later, Brandt approved a private message through the contact address on the locker receipt, which railway police had recovered from its rental record. It carried the picture of the horse and one sentence.

Your mother is safe. You decide whether to speak.

No demand. No threat. No promise they couldn't keep.

They waited in the guarded corridor while Odette slept behind glass.

Rhys sat beside Elara. Their shoulders touched, and neither shifted.

“After Julian,” he said, “did you ever think you'd trust someone again?”

“I thought trust meant giving a person the power to decide for me.”

“And now?”

“Now I think it means seeing whether they'll let me decide for myself.”

He turned toward her. “And do I?”

“Usually.”

A reluctant smile crossed his face.

Her phone vibrated.

Brandt appeared at the end of the corridor, already reading his own screen.

“The message was answered,” he said.

Elara stood.

“Gabriel?”

“Possibly. There's no name.”

Brandt showed them the reply.

I can prove who ordered the first dose. But don't tell Rhys yet.

Beneath it was an attachment: a photograph of an old medical authorization.

Elara enlarged the signature.

It wasn't Augustin's.

It belonged to the man who had supposedly fought to stop the treatments.

Marcus Calloway. Rhys's father.