“You don’t know what you’ll ruin.”
This time, he did look back.
“No,” he said. “I know exactly what I’m going to save.”
Priya met him at the old caretaker’s cottage thirty minutes later with two private investigators and a retired judge named Malcolm Reed, who wore a raincoat over pajamas and carried a flashlight like a sword.
The orchard had gone wild over the years. Branches scraped against the cottage windows. The air smelled of damp leaves and old earth. Rowan unlocked the warped door with his father’s key, and they stepped into a room untouched by time.
Dust lay thick on the counters.
A cracked mug sat beside the sink.
Beneath the pantry shelves, they found the loose floorboard.
Under it sat a metal lockbox.
Inside were files.
Dozens of them.
Names. Dates. Payments. Placement agreements. Medical transfers. Confidential memoranda. Hawthorne had operated for years in the space between wealth and secrecy, turning frightened families into paperwork and children into problems to be managed.
Priya’s face grew paler with every page.
Then Rowan found Lily’s file.
His daughter’s first photograph was clipped to the inside cover.
She was impossibly small, wrapped in hospital blankets, eyes closed, one tiny hand curled near her mouth.
Rowan touched the edge of the photograph with one finger.
“Lily,” he whispered.
Priya leaned over the file. “There’s a placement name.”
Rowan’s heart pounded.
The adoptive family listed was sealed under a confidentiality code, but an internal memo had been tucked behind the medical records.
Temporary placement approved with Jonathan and Abigail Mercer pending final review.
Priya inhaled. “I know that name.”
Rowan looked at her.
“Abigail Mercer runs a children’s music school in Brentwood. Her husband is a pediatric physical therapist. They lost a baby years ago.” Priya’s expression softened. “Rowan, they may not know.”
“Know what?”
“That Lily was taken.”
The words changed everything.
Until that moment, Rowan had imagined villains behind every door. But now he pictured a couple holding a fragile infant, believing they had been chosen to love her.
Megan had been robbed.
But perhaps Lily had not been unloved.
That thought steadied him.
“Can we go there?” he asked.
Priya checked the file. “Not tonight. We need to do this carefully. If the Mercers are innocent, we protect them too. If Lily is with them, the priority is not drama. It’s her well-being.”
Rowan closed the folder slowly. “Megan needs to know.”
