The Daughter They Abandoned Twice novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What I Did to Him

Levi's POV

I landed in Elko at nine that night and went straight to the third floor.

Cassidy was on shift.

She had told security everything, and a guard in a blue blazer sat in the ICU waiting room with a coffee, checking each face that came off the elevator.

I sat across from him until two in the morning.

Hallie had made me promise to call her every hour.

I called her at one, and she was awake, and she said, "Don't be a hero."

I said I was only going to sit there.

She said, "I know you."

I did not tell her that I could feel my hands closing and opening on my knees.

At ten past three the elevator opened on a man in a green surgical cap, pushing a cart of folded linen.

He wore pale blue scrubs and a hospital badge on a lanyard, and he had shaved his moustache.

I almost let him pass.

Then I saw how he walked, slow and unbothered, with his head a little to one side.

I stood up.

The guard looked at me.

"That's him," I said. "Call it in."

The man with the cart did not hurry.

He pushed it past the waiting room, past the nurses' station, and through the door marked STAFF ONLY.

I was across the floor before the guard had his radio out.

The break room was small, with a table and a sink and a wall of lockers.

Cassidy stood by the coffee machine, still in her scrubs, holding a paper cup.

Garner sat on the corner of the table with his cap pushed back.

"Evening, Cass," he said pleasantly. "I thought we should talk about your parents."

She said nothing.

"The couple in the white house on Fifth Street." He smiled. "They paid forty thousand dollars. It's a felony, buying a child. Ten years each, maybe more."

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