Chapter 11 - The Shadow of Vanguard
The room seemed to spin around me. Nurse Davies's warning sounded like an icy splash of reality against our desperate hopes.
"Nurse Davies," I pleaded into the phone, "if the log is in Vanguard’s corporate archives, how can we ever prove what happened? They have armed security, legal barricades, endless money. How did you expect my father to ever expose them?"
"Your father almost succeeded," Eleanor said, coughing weakly. "Arthur was brilliant, Sarah. When Bennett moved the archives in 1991, your father befriended a night custodian at the St. Jude administrative building—a man named Thomas Reyes. Thomas made microfiche copies of the surfactant clinical files before Bennett had the originals boxed and sealed."
"Where are those microfiches?" Grant asked urgently into the speaker.
"Your father hid them," Eleanor whispered. "He told me he kept them in a place where only someone who truly loved Grace would ever find them. He said it was in the only thing he built with his own two hands for his lost girl."
The phone line abruptly crackled with heavy interference.
"Nurse Davies? Eleanor?" I shouted.
"They know I’ve reached out," she whispered frantically. "Be careful, Sarah. Bennett will protect Vanguard at all costs. Don't trust Sterling. Don't go to the—"
The call went dead with a sharp, hollow click.
I stared at the black screen of my phone, the silence of the kitchen pressing in around us like a vice.
"Sarah," Grant said, his eyes wide with sudden realization. "What did she just say? *The only thing he built with his own two hands for his lost girl.*"
My thoughts raced back through the years. My father had never been a handyman. He was an accountant who dealt with ledgers and calculators. But when Patricia was pregnant with Grace, he had taken woodshop classes at the local community college for three months.
"The rocking chair," I breathed, my eyes filling with tears. "The wooden rocker in the attic! Mom told me Dad built it while she was expecting Grace. When Grace died, he packed it away in the attic and refused to let me use it when I was born. He said it was too old-fashioned."
"We left the attic two days ago without even looking at the chair," Grant said, standing up and grabbing his car keys. "It's still at Patricia’s house."
"Wait," I said, grabbing Grant’s arm. "If Vanguard has people watching us, they might be watching Mom's house too. We can't just barge in there in the middle of the night. If Bennett realizes what that rocking chair contains, Mom could be in danger."
Just then, the baby monitor on the counter crackled to life.
It wasn't Maisie crying.
It was the distinct, unmistakable sound of footsteps crunching across the frozen snow on the back deck directly beneath Maisie’s nursery window.
Grant’s face turned white. He immediately reached for the heavy iron fire poker resting by the hearth. "Stay down, Sarah. Call 911."
Before I could dial, the kitchen window shattered in an explosion of glass.
A heavy brick wrapped in duct tape crashed across the linoleum, skidding to a halt by my feet. Outside, the roar of an engine gunned in the alley behind our garage, tires shrieking as a vehicle sped away into the night.
Trembling uncontrollably, I fell to my knees, shielding my head. Grant rushed to the broken window, peering into the darkness, the fire poker raised in his fist.
"They're gone!" Grant yelled, turning back to me. "Are you hit? Sarah, are you hurt?"
"I'm okay," I gasped, my whole body shaking. "Maisie! Check Maisie!"
Grant sprinted up the stairs two at a time. I heard his frantic footsteps in the nursery, followed by the comforting sound of Maisie’s sleepy, startled cry. A moment later, Grant appeared at the top of the stairs, cradling Maisie wrapped in her blanket.
"She’s fine. She’s safe," Grant said, his voice trembling with relief and fury.
I looked down at the brick lying on our kitchen floor. Taped to the rough red clay was a single piece of printed paper.
I crawled over and peeled it back. Printed on it were three simple words:
May you like
**LET IT REST.**
Beneath the words was a timestamped photograph taken less than an hour ago. It showed Patricia, sitting alone at her kitchen table through her front window, sipping tea, completely unaware that a sniper or a watcher had her centered in their camera lens.
