Chapter 4 - ASHES AT ST. AUGUSTINE’SBy the time they reached St. Augustine’s, the sky above the hospital was already stained orange.
Fire trucks crowded the avenue. Police cars blocked the street. Nurses in blue scrubs huddled behind barricades. Patients watched from upper windows with pale faces and glowing phone screens.
Only one part of the hospital burned.
Not the emergency room.
Not the maternity ward.
The private fertility wing.
Elena stood behind the police line in Caden’s coat because he had placed it around her shoulders without asking. It swallowed her frame and smelled faintly of rain, cedar, and something expensive she did not know the name of.
The triplets were back at Blackwater Hill with Ortega, two guards, and a pediatric nurse summoned from a private number. Elena had resisted leaving them, but Caden had said the fire might not be an accident.
That had been enough.
Now she watched flames climb the windows of the building that had stolen more than her children.
It had stolen fourteen months of motherhood.
Caden stood beside her, expression carved from stone.
“You should have called the police,” Elena said.
“I did.”
She glanced at him.
“Not the ones on payroll,” he added.
A detective approached them through the smoke. Mid-forties, tired eyes, trench coat, the face of a man who had learned not to flinch at powerful people.
“Voss.”
“Detective Shaw.”
The detective looked at Elena. “Miss Voss?”
Elena stiffened.
Caden said, “She’s involved.”
“I gathered.” Shaw’s gaze moved to the burning wing. “Funny thing. We got an anonymous call fifteen minutes before the fire.”
Caden’s eyes narrowed. “Saying what?”
“That records would burn tonight.”
Elena’s stomach twisted.
“Who called?”
“Voice altered.” Shaw studied Caden. “Wasn’t yours.”
Caden almost smiled. “You’d know?”
“I’d hope you’d have better taste in theatrics.”
Despite everything, Elena felt a flicker of surprise.
Caden Voss and a detective who insulted him casually.
Interesting.
Shaw turned serious again. “Security cameras went down seven minutes before ignition. Fire started in records storage. Accelerant confirmed by first responders.”
Elena looked at the flames. “They’re destroying proof.”
“Trying to,” Shaw said. “Question is, proof of what?”
Caden took the folder from inside his coat and handed it to him.
Shaw opened it.
His expression did not change as he looked through the photograph, the unsigned death certificates, the illegal transfer papers, and Judge Pierce’s stamped emergency order.
But by the end, his jaw had tightened.
“Where did you get this?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Shaw looked at him for a long moment, then tucked the folder beneath his arm.
“I never saw originals,” he said.
Caden’s gaze sharpened.
Shaw added, “But copies might be useful.”
Elena understood then.
Detective Shaw was not clean in the way innocent people imagined police should be clean. He was practical. He knew the city. He knew the men inside it.
And he hated something enough to work with monsters.
A firefighter shouted. Glass exploded from the third floor.
Elena flinched.
Caden moved slightly closer, blocking sparks with his body before she realized what he was doing.
She hated that she noticed.
“Miss Voss,” Shaw said gently, “I need to ask you something.”
Elena looked at him.
“Were you ever told why no autopsy, no viewing, no burial?”
Her throat tightened. “They said the babies were too fragile.”
“That’s not how infant death procedures work.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No one would expect you to know.” His voice softened. “That’s why they chose you.”
The words landed hard.
A woman with no money. No mother left. No husband. No lawyer. No one to stand in the room and say show me the bodies.
Elena wrapped Caden’s coat tighter around herself.
“Dr. Marianne Vale,” she said. “Ruth Bell. Gary Bell. Judge Pierce.”
Shaw nodded. “Anyone else?”
Elena closed her eyes, trying to remember.
Hospital lights. The sound of machines. A nurse’s hand adjusting her IV. Ruth’s pearls. Dr. Vale’s perfume. The clipboard. Her own hand too weak to hold the pen.
Then another memory surfaced.
Not a face.
A voice.
A man’s voice in the hallway while she drifted between anesthesia and pain.
Make sure Voss never sees the carrier.
Elena opened her eyes.
“There was a man,” she whispered.
Caden turned toward her.
“What man?”
“I didn’t see him. I heard him. After delivery. He said…” She swallowed. “Make sure Voss never sees the carrier.”
Caden’s whole body changed.
Shaw noticed. “That mean something?”
Caden’s eyes stayed on the fire.
“Yes.”
“Name?”
Caden did not answer.
Shaw waited.
Elena looked up at him. “Caden?”
His face was emotionless now, which frightened her more than anger.
“My father’s former consigliere,” he said. “Alistair Crane.”
One of Caden’s men cursed under his breath.
Shaw’s eyebrows rose. “Crane vanished after your father died.”
“He didn’t vanish.”
“You know where he is?”
“I know where he likes to hide.”
The detective took out a small notebook. “Voss, if Crane is connected to trafficking newborns through a fertility clinic, this is bigger than your family.”
Caden looked at him.
“My family is big enough.”
Elena stepped between them before the air could ignite.
“No,” she said.
Both men looked at her.
She was still shaking. Still grieving. Still wearing a diner uniform under a mafia boss’s coat. But something inside her had changed the moment Sofia said bad on the steps of Blackwater Hill.
She was not only a victim anymore.
She was a mother.
And mothers did not bow politely while men turned their pain into war games.
“This is not only about your family,” Elena said to Caden. “And it is not only about an investigation,” she said to Shaw. “There may be other women. Other babies. Other graves without bodies.”
Shaw’s expression darkened.
Caden looked at her for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
“Tell me what you want.”
Elena turned toward the burning hospital wing.
“I want the truth alive,” she said. “Not buried in ashes. Not hidden by money. Not killed before daylight.”
A firefighter ran past them carrying a blackened metal box.
Shaw shouted, “What is that?”
The firefighter coughed. “Found it in the basement vault. Fire didn’t reach it.”
Caden’s eyes narrowed.
Elena stared at the box.
The front had been scorched, but a brass label remained readable.
CRYOGENIC EMBRYO ARCHIVE — RESTRICTED.
Shaw looked at Caden.
Caden looked at Elena.
Then the metal box began to beep.
Not once.
May you like
Three times.
Like a heartbeat.
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