PART 4: THE SECRET INSIDE THE BLUE RABBIT
Mercer held up the photograph of the woman tied to a chair inside my house.
“She is the real Emily Carter,” he said. “Bring me the blue rabbit before sunrise, or your mother dies.”
I stared at the photograph.
The woman’s face was bruised, and silver duct tape covered her mouth, but I could see the same eyes I had seen in the old missing-person picture.
My eyes.
I turned toward the woman from Room 17.
“Who are you?”
Pain crossed her face.
“My name is Claire Carter.”
“Carter?”
“I’m Emily’s older sister.”
Mercer laughed.
“She has been pretending to be Emily for years.”
“I never pretended to be anyone,” Claire snapped. “Your men erased my name from every record.”
Mercer aimed his gun at her.
“You should have stayed in your room.”
Claire stepped in front of me.
“When Emily discovered what Daniel was doing, she came to me for help. We planned to take you and disappear. But he found out.”
I looked at Mercer.
“You were selling babies?”
“I was arranging private adoptions.”
“You stole children.”
“I gave unwanted children better lives.”
“You murdered people who tried to expose you.”
His eyes hardened.
“Be careful, son.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Margaret moved closer to him.
“Enough talking. Take the tape.”
Rebecca tightened her grip on her gun.
“If you shoot Nathan, you’ll never find the rabbit.”
Margaret smiled.
“We don’t need Nathan alive. We need his house.”
I remembered the state trooper’s warning.
Whatever you do, do not go home tonight.
He had known they were waiting there.
He had known the rabbit was inside.
The security guard beside us whispered, “There’s another exit through the medical wing.”
Mercer heard him.
His gun shifted.
The guard fired first.
The corridor erupted.
Rebecca shoved me into Room 17 as bullets struck the wall.
Claire followed and slammed the door.
The guard cried out and collapsed in the hallway.
Rebecca fired through the observation window, forcing Mercer and Margaret behind a corner.
“Is there another way out?” she asked.
Claire pointed toward an air vent near the floor.
“It connects to the old laundry tunnel.”
Rebecca dragged the bed away from the wall.
I tore the metal cover loose with my bare hands.
Behind it was a narrow concrete passage.
“You first,” Rebecca told Claire.
Claire crawled inside.
I followed.
Rebecca entered last and pulled the vent back into place.
A bullet punched through the door just as we disappeared.
We crawled through darkness while alarms screamed behind us.
The tunnel smelled of dust, rust, and standing water.
My hands scraped against broken concrete.
Claire moved quickly despite her weakened condition.
“How long were you locked in there?” I asked.
“Eleven years.”
“And Emily?”
“Mercer moved her constantly. Hospitals, safe houses, private facilities. Every time Margaret got close to finding her, he moved her again.”
I stopped crawling.
“I thought Margaret and Mercer were working together.”
“They are now. But they have betrayed each other more times than I can count.”
Rebecca’s voice came from behind me.
“What does each one want?”
“Mercer wants the tape because it proves he created the network. Margaret wants it because it proves she helped him.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would they both want evidence of their own crimes?”
“Because the tape doesn’t contain only evidence.”
Claire looked back at me.
“It contains the account numbers.”
“What account numbers?”
“The families paid millions for those children. Mercer hid the money in overseas accounts. The tape identifies every account and the key needed to access them.”
“So this is about money?”
“It was always about money.”
We reached a metal grate.
Claire pushed it open, and freezing night air filled the tunnel.
We climbed into the woods behind Briarwood.
Rebecca checked her phone.
“No signal.”
Claire pointed toward a distant road.
“There’s a farmhouse about a mile east.”
We ran through the trees.
Behind us, flashlights moved around the hospital grounds.
Mercer’s people were already searching.
Branches tore at my jacket.
Claire stumbled twice, but each time she refused my help.
When we reached the farmhouse, it appeared abandoned.
Rebecca forced open the kitchen door.
Inside, dust covered everything.
An old landline hung on the wall.
I lifted the receiver.
There was a dial tone.
I called the state trooper whose card had started all of this.
He answered on the second ring.
“Trooper Hale.”
“This is Nathan Brooks.”
He inhaled sharply.
“Where are you?”
“Near Briarwood Hospital.”
“You went to Ohio?”
“You told me to call Mercer.”
“I told you to call the number on the card. I did not know Mercer would answer.”
“What does that mean?”
“The number belonged to Detective Laura Hayes. She was leading a federal investigation into Mercer.”
“Mercer answered using her phone.”
Silence.
Then Hale asked, “Have you seen Hayes?”
“No.”
“She disappeared yesterday morning.”
My stomach dropped.
“Mercer has my mother inside my house.”
“Nathan, listen carefully. Police entered your home an hour ago. It was empty.”
“He sent me a photograph.”
“The photograph may not be recent.”
I looked at Claire.
“Can you trace a picture?”
“Send it to me.”
I forwarded the image.
Hale stayed on the phone while someone analyzed it.
Rebecca searched the farmhouse for supplies.
Claire stood at the window, watching the woods.
Finally, Hale returned.
“The photograph was taken three years ago.”
My knees weakened.
“Three years?”
“There’s more. The room in the picture isn’t inside your house. The background was digitally replaced.”
“Then where is Emily now?”
“We don’t know.”
Claire turned from the window.
“Yes, we do.”
She reached beneath her shirt and removed a small silver pendant.
Inside was a folded strip of paper.
“Emily gave me this before Mercer separated us.”
On it was an address.
Rebecca read it and went pale.
“That’s Margaret’s house.”
The house where we had eaten dinner the previous night.
The house where Rebecca claimed she would stay to organize family photographs.
“Emily was there?” I asked.
Rebecca shook her head.
“I didn’t know.”
Claire stared at her.
“Did Margaret keep you out of the basement?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened.
“She always kept it locked.”
Hale spoke through the phone.
“Do not go there. Federal agents are on their way.”
A vehicle engine growled outside.
Headlights swept across the farmhouse windows.
Rebecca killed the lights.
We dropped below the windows.
Two black SUVs stopped in the yard.
“Mercer found us,” Claire whispered.
Men surrounded the house.
A voice boomed from outside.
“Nathan, come out with the tape.”
Mercer.
Rebecca looked around desperately.
“There’s no back exit.”
I handed the cassette to Claire.
“Hide this.”
She slipped it beneath a loose floorboard.
Mercer called again.
“If you make me come inside, people will die.”
I moved toward the front door.
Rebecca grabbed me.
“What are you doing?”
“Buying time.”
“You’ll get yourself killed.”
“He needs the rabbit. He won’t kill me until he finds it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but I know he has spent fifteen years looking for it.”
I stepped onto the porch with my hands raised.
Mercer stood in the yard.
Margaret was beside him.
Six armed men surrounded the house.
“Where is the tape?” Mercer asked.
“Somewhere you’ll never find it.”
He smiled.
“I can always make Rebecca tell me.”
“She doesn’t know.”
Margaret looked toward the farmhouse.
“You were always a terrible liar, Nathan.”
“Where is my mother?”
“Safe,” Mercer answered.
“Prove it.”
He removed his phone and started a video call.
A woman appeared on the screen.
Her hair was gray, and her face looked older than in the photograph, but I recognized her immediately.
Emily Carter.
This time the image was live.
She looked into the camera.
“Nathan?”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Mom?”
The word escaped before I could stop it.
Emily began crying.
Mercer ended the call.
“Bring me the rabbit, and I will release her.”
“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”
“You don’t.”
Police sirens sounded far away.
Mercer glanced toward the road.
His smile disappeared.
“Get him into the car.”
Two men grabbed me.
Rebecca fired from the farmhouse window.
One man fell.
Claire fired from another window using the guard’s weapon.
The yard exploded into chaos.
I drove my elbow into the second man’s throat and ran toward the trees.
Margaret fired at me.
The bullet struck the porch railing.
Mercer shouted for his men to retreat.
The sirens grew louder.
Rebecca rushed from the house and pulled me behind a tractor.
Claire followed with the cassette.
Mercer’s SUVs tore across the field seconds before police vehicles arrived.
Trooper Hale was in the first cruiser.
He ran toward us with his weapon drawn.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Where are Mercer and Margaret going?”
“My house,” I said.
Hale looked confused.
“They know the rabbit is there.”
“No, Nathan. They know you’ll go there.”
He ordered officers to search the farmhouse and protect Claire.
Then he drove Rebecca and me back toward Indiana.
Federal agents were already moving toward Margaret’s property to find Emily.
During the three-hour drive, I held the cassette in my lap.
Rebecca sat beside me but did not touch me.
I wanted to trust her.
I also wanted to ask whether our entire marriage had been nothing more than a mission.
But there was no time for either.
When we reached my neighborhood, dawn was beginning to brighten the sky.
Police vehicles surrounded our street.
Our front door stood open.
Inside, furniture had been overturned.
Drawers were scattered across the floor.
They had searched everything.
But they had not found the rabbit.
I went to the attic.
The old box was exactly where I had left it.
Inside, beneath my childhood photographs, lay the faded blue rabbit.
One of its glass eyes was missing.
Its fur was thin and stained.
I had slept with it every night as a child.
Rebecca closed the attic door behind us.
“How do we find the key?”
I remembered Emily’s melody.
The tune I had hummed my entire life.
I pressed the rabbit’s left paw in time with the first note.
Something clicked.
I pressed its right ear with the second note.
Then its stomach.
Then its left foot.
With each note of the melody, another hidden mechanism released.
A seam opened along the rabbit’s back.
Inside was a tiny brass key and a small audio device.
The cassette did not require a player.
It fit directly into the device.
I inserted it and turned the brass key.
Static filled the attic.
Then a man’s voice began speaking.
It was Mercer.
“My name is Daniel Price. If you are hearing this, then Emily has taken our son.”
Rebecca and I looked at each other.
The recording continued.
“Project Willow began with twelve children. Margaret believes it was created to make money, but she does not know its true purpose.”
I turned up the volume.
“The children were selected because their biological parents carried a rare genetic marker. Nathan is the only child who inherited it from both parents.”
Rebecca whispered, “What genetic marker?”
Mercer answered from fifteen years in the past.
“The marker creates resistance to a neurological drug developed by Blackwood Medical. Everyone exposed to the drug loses specific memories.”
My skin went cold.
Memories.
The missing years.
The forgotten melody.
The people in Briarwood who no longer knew their own names.
“The eleven other children died during testing,” Mercer continued. “Nathan survived.”
Rebecca covered her mouth.
I stared at the blue rabbit.
I had never been hidden because of money.
I had been hidden because I was evidence.
The recording changed.
A woman’s voice replaced Mercer’s.
Emily.
“Nathan, if you are listening, please understand that Rebecca is not your enemy. I placed her near you.”
Rebecca stumbled backward.
“What?”
I looked at her.
“You said Margaret sent you.”
“She did.”
But Emily’s recording continued.
“Margaret believes she chose Rebecca from foster care because of her resemblance to me. She did not. I arranged everything. Rebecca was meant to protect you when the truth returned.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“I never knew.”
“Then who is she?” I whispered.
Emily answered.
“Rebecca is the thirteenth child.”
The attic went silent except for the device.
“She survived the first stage of Project Willow. But unlike you, she did not inherit resistance. Her memories can be removed and rewritten.”
Rebecca’s face drained of color.
“She doesn’t remember who she was,” Emily said. “And if Mercer finds her, he can activate the conditioning again using a spoken phrase.”
A floorboard creaked behind us.
We turned.
Mercer stood at the top of the attic stairs.
His wounded arm hung at his side.
In his other hand was a gun.
Margaret stood behind him.
Mercer looked at Rebecca and smiled.
Then he spoke five quiet words.
“The willow bends at midnight.”
Rebecca’s body became completely still.
Her expression emptied.
Her gun slowly turned toward me.
“Rebecca?” I whispered.
She aimed directly at my heart.
Mercer’s smile widened.
“Kill Nathan,” he ordered.
Rebecca placed her finger on the trigger.
Then, without emotion, my wife said, “Goodbye.”….
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