Chapter 5 - SAINT GERMAINE
Saint Germaine Behavioral Hospital stood behind rusted gates at the edge of a dead industrial town.
The main building had once been beautiful.
Red brick.
Tall arched windows.
A stone chapel attached to the east wing.
Now half the windows were broken.
Vines crawled over the walls.
A faded sign warned that the property was condemned.
Khloe stared through the SUV windshield.
“This is where they brought my father?”
Mateo nodded.
Lorenzo checked the magazine of his handgun.
Khloe looked at him.
“Do you always do that before entering abandoned psychiatric hospitals?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Very reassuring.”
They had brought six men.
Khloe hated that she had already learned their names.
Dante.
Nico.
Sebastian.
Luis.
Marco.
And Ellis, who carried extra batteries, medical supplies, and snacks as if preparing for a Boy Scout trip with automatic weapons.
Lorenzo turned to Khloe.
“You stay beside me.”
“I know.”
“If I say run—”
“I run.”
“If I say down—”
“I fall down. Probably without needing the instruction.”
He gave her a look.
She opened the door.
The air smelled like wet leaves and old metal.
They entered through a side service entrance.
Inside, the building was colder.
Their flashlights moved across peeling paint and abandoned furniture.
Wheelchairs.
Broken lamps.
Mildewed mattresses.
Khloe’s stomach tightened.
She imagined her father here.
Alive.
Afraid.
Waiting for a daughter who believed him dead.
Lorenzo seemed to sense her thoughts.
“Do not decide what happened before we know.”
“That sounds like something a person says when the truth is usually terrible.”
“It is something I say because you punish yourself with possibilities.”
Khloe looked at him.
“You have known me six days.”
“Seven.”
“That is worse.”
Before they left the grass behind the chapel, Mateo made everyone stop and account for what had survived the fire. Two of Lorenzo’s men had burns. One had taken a bullet through the upper arm. The paper file in Khloe’s hands smelled of smoke, its edges blackened but its pages still readable. She held it with ridiculous care.
Lorenzo noticed.
“You can put it in the evidence bag.”
“No.”
“It will be safer.”
“It has spent fourteen years in a cabinet inside a torture basement. It can stay with me for five minutes.”
He nodded.
Khloe opened the folder again. This time she read beyond the transfer notation. There were pages of cognitive tests. Her father had been shown strings of numbers, bank routing codes, coordinates, shipping weights, names, dates. Sometimes he answered. Sometimes the examiner wrote SUBJECT NONCOMPLIANT. On one page, someone had handwritten a sentence in red.
DAUGHTER REMAINS PRIMARY LEVERAGE.
Khloe stopped.
Lorenzo saw the line over her shoulder.
Something in him changed.
Not surprise.
Rage.
Quiet and concentrated.
“They knew about me the whole time.”
“Yes.”
“They could have come for me.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“Because your father cooperated enough to keep them from needing you.”
Khloe looked toward the smoking building.
All those years she had imagined her father absent from her life. She had been angry at a dead man for missing birthdays, graduations, her mother’s funeral, every disaster that followed.
Now another possibility existed.
Maybe he had spent those years surrendering pieces of himself so strangers would leave her alone.
Her knees weakened.
Lorenzo steadied her elbow.
Khloe did not pull away.
“He paid for my ordinary life,” she whispered.
Lorenzo looked at the file.
“If this is accurate, yes.”
“It was not even a good ordinary life.”
“You survived it.”
“That is a very low bar.”
“It is still one many people do not clear.”
She looked at him.
There were times when Lorenzo spoke like a man who had spent his entire childhood measuring success by survival.
Khloe closed the folder.
“Then I am not wasting what he bought me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if he is alive, I am finding him. And if he is dead, I am finding who did it.”
Lorenzo’s gaze held hers.
“That sounds dangerously like something I would say.”
“Do not ruin it.”
They reached the basement stairs.
A steel door blocked the bottom.
Mateo examined it.
“New lock.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
“How new?”
“Less than a year.”
The hospital had been closed eight years.
Khloe felt the hairs on her arms rise.
“They are still using this place.”
Mateo nodded.
“Looks like it.”
Dante opened the door using a hydraulic tool.
The basement beyond did not look abandoned.
The corridor had been cleaned.
Power ran to ceiling lights.
Security cameras watched from corners.
Lorenzo raised his weapon.
“Kill the cameras.”
Nico moved toward a junction box.
The lights went out.
Emergency red strips activated near the floor.
Khloe’s heartbeat accelerated.
They moved deeper.
Rooms lined the corridor.
Most were empty.
One contained restraints attached to a metal table.
Khloe looked away.
At the far end, they found a records room.
Rows of file cabinets.
Lorenzo assigned guards to the hall.
Khloe entered.
Dust covered everything.
She began searching names.
H.
Higgins.
Nothing.
Mateo opened another cabinet.
“Files are coded.”
Khloe looked.
Numbers.
Thousands of them.
No names.
She picked up the first folder.
Patient 038441.
Date.
Medication.
Transfers.
No identifying information.
She scanned another.
Another.
Then one sequence caught her eye.
3179.
The four-digit door.
Printed in the corner of a file.
Khloe froze.
“Lorenzo.”
He came instantly.
She showed him.
The folder belonged to Patient 3179.
Admission date: October eighteenth, fourteen years ago.
One day after the order.
Khloe’s hands shook as she opened it.
Physical description.
Male.
Forty-one.
Brown hair.
Green eyes.
Scar on left index finger.
Her father had that scar.
He cut himself repairing a bicycle when Khloe was six.
She pressed a hand over her mouth.
“It is him.”
Lorenzo read.
The file continued for six years.
Medication.
Interrogation.
Cognitive testing.
Memory retention.
Financial decryption.
Then the final page.
TRANSFERRED.
Eight years ago.
Destination code: HARBOR LIGHT.
Khloe looked up.
“What is Harbor Light?”
Mateo shook his head.
Lorenzo did not.
“You know.”
Khloe saw it immediately.
“What?”
He closed the folder.
“An island.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Where?”
“Off Maine.”
“Your family?”
“No.”
“Bellweather?”
“Yes.”
A gunshot sounded in the hallway.
Everyone froze.
Then shouting.
Lorenzo grabbed Khloe.
“Behind me.”
More gunfire.
One of the guards stumbled into the room.
“Contact!”
Bullets tore through the doorframe.
Khloe dropped behind a filing cabinet.
Lorenzo and Mateo returned fire.
The basement became chaos.
Then Khloe saw smoke.
Gray at first.
Then black.
“They set a fire!”
Lorenzo looked toward the hallway.
Flames moved along the ceiling.
Someone was burning the records.
Khloe grabbed Patient 3179’s file.
Lorenzo saw.
“Leave it.”
“No.”
“Khloe.”
“It is my father.”
He moved to her, took off his jacket, wrapped it around the folder, and shoved both into her arms.
“Then do not lose it.”
They retreated through a secondary corridor.
Smoke thickened.
Khloe coughed.
The floor plan made no sense.
Turns.
Locked doors.
Dead ends.
The attackers had planned the trap.
Lorenzo led them toward what should have been an exterior stairwell.
Instead, they found a concrete wall.
“Renovated,” Mateo said.
“Back.”
They turned.
A section of ceiling collapsed behind them.
Flames blocked the way.
Khloe’s panic spiked.
“We are trapped.”
Lorenzo grabbed her shoulders.
“No.”
“There is fire everywhere.”
“Look at me.”
She did.
“Buildings have systems. You notice systems.”
“What?”
“You saw the codes. The corridors. Think.”
Khloe stared at him.
He believed she could solve a burning hospital.
Her brain kicked into focus.
She looked around.
Emergency signs.
Pipe labels.
Room numbers.
Air vents.
A floor drain.
She remembered the old architectural style.
Hospitals needed service access.
Laundry.
Boilers.
Maintenance tunnels.
She turned.
“Room numbers decrease that way.”
Mateo looked.
“So?”
“The basement plan loops around a central utility core. If this used to be a hospital, there would be a service passage behind the laundry.”
“How do you know?”
“My college dorm was converted from a hospital.”
Lorenzo blinked.
“Of course it was.”
They ran.
Khloe counted doors.
110.
108.
106.
Laundry.
Locked.
Dante fired the lock.
Inside were industrial machines covered in rust.
Khloe searched the walls.
Nothing.
Smoke entered behind them.
Her eyes watered.
“Come on.”
She saw a metal hook.
Pulled it.
A panel shifted.
Behind it, a narrow tunnel.
Lorenzo looked at her.
“Clumsy?”
“Still accurate.”
They entered.
The passage led uphill.
Air improved.
Behind them, part of the basement collapsed.
Khloe ran until her lungs burned.
At the end, they found a hatch.
Mateo forced it.
Cold daylight poured in.
They emerged behind the old chapel.
Khloe fell onto wet grass.
Lorenzo dropped beside her.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then he laughed.
Not a quiet almost-smile.
A real laugh.
Khloe stared.
“What?”
“You found a tunnel because your dormitory used to be a hospital.”
She began laughing too.
The reaction felt insane.
Smoke poured from the building behind them.
Men had died.
Her father might be alive.
Still they laughed because sometimes terror left no other exit.
Then Lorenzo’s hand touched her face.
The laughter stopped.
His thumb brushed soot from her cheek.
Khloe looked at him.
Too close.
Too intense.
Something had changed between them days ago, and both had refused to name it.
Now, outside a burning hospital, denial became more difficult.
“Khloe.”
She swallowed.
“Yes?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
A vehicle engine roared.
They turned.
A black sedan accelerated across the abandoned parking lot.
Mateo raised his weapon.
Too late.
The car sped away.
Lorenzo’s men ran after it.
Khloe noticed something near the chapel wall.
A man.
Older.
Thin.
Watching them.
He wore a gray coat.
His hair was white.
For one impossible second, Khloe could not breathe.
The man lifted his left hand.
There was a scar across the index finger.
“Dad?”
The word barely came out.
The man’s face changed.
Pain.
Recognition.
He turned and ran behind the chapel.
Khloe chased him.
“Dad!”
Lorenzo shouted her name.
She ignored him.
She rounded the corner.
Empty.
Only trees.
A footpath.
No man.
Khloe stopped.
Her heart pounded.
Lorenzo caught up.
“What happened?”
“I saw him.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
Lorenzo searched the trees.
“You are sure?”
“Yes.”
Then Khloe saw something on the ground.
A folded piece of paper.
She picked it up.
One sentence.
Written in handwriting she remembered from childhood.
May you like
DO NOT TRUST THE MORETTI WHO SAVED YOU.
Khloe slowly turned toward Lorenzo.
