Thomas Vale was attacked during prison transport.
The official reason for the transport was medical review, but Mara later learned the order had been entered through an outdated administrative path, the kind of old system nobody checks until it is used to move the wrong man at the wrong time. Thomas was placed in a van with two guards and driven out of Northgate at 2:40 p.m.
At 3:12, the van stopped transmitting location.
At 3:19, a farmer called 911 about a prison vehicle abandoned on a service road near Bell Creek.
By the time state police arrived, one guard was unconscious, the other locked inside the rear cage, and Thomas Vale was gone.
Not escaped.
Taken.
On the van floor, someone had left Rachel’s locket.
Daniel arrived with Mara twenty minutes later and saw it lying inside an evidence marker. His stomach dropped. The same object she had placed in his cruiser had now been used again, this time to pull Thomas back into the center of the case.
Mara looked at the service road.
“Rachel warned us.”
Daniel said, “Or arranged it.”
She did not answer.
That was the problem now.
Rachel’s every warning led to proof, but also to danger. Ross died after she approached him. Thomas was taken after she texted Daniel. Miriam appeared with documents only after Rachel had forced the case open. Was Rachel exposing the network or moving everyone else into its path?
Maybe both.
At 4:02, Daniel received a call from Thomas’s prison-issued legal line.
Impossible.
He answered on speaker.
Thomas’s voice came through, strained but alive.
“Officer Hayes?”
“Thomas, where are you?”
“I don’t know. Basement. Concrete. She’s here.”
Mara leaned closer. “Rachel?”
Thomas breathed hard.
“Yes.”
Daniel’s grip tightened.
“Did she take you?”
“No.”
A woman spoke in the background.
Rachel.
“Tell Mara to look at the old courthouse nursery.”
Mara went still.
“What nursery?”
Rachel came closer to the phone.
“The room where they kept babies before signatures.”
The line crackled.
Thomas said, “Rachel, don’t—”
Then a loud thud cut him off.
Daniel shouted into the phone.
No answer.
The call ended.
Miriam Cross, still in the state building under protection, turned pale when Mara asked about the courthouse nursery.
“It was not called that officially,” Miriam said.
“What was it?”
“A waiting room behind family court. My father used it during private guardianship hearings.”
“For children?”
Miriam closed her eyes.
“For mothers who were told they had no options.”
The old courthouse had been closed for renovations for six months.
But its basement records wing still existed.
And if Rachel had taken Thomas there, or been taken there with him, she was dragging everyone back to the room where the original crimes began.