Chapter 2 - The Hospital in Pennsylvania
Before dawn broke over the Manhattan skyline, my private investigator, Marcus Kane, called my secure line.
"Alister, I traced the handwritten bus ticket voucher the little girl was carrying in her pocket," Kane said, static crackling over the encrypted frequency.
"The bus originated from a municipal station in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at two-fifteen yesterday afternoon."
"What about Daisy?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs so violently it made my voice shake.
"Daisy Bell was admitted to St. Jude’s Charity Hospice in Scranton twelve days ago under an indigent care waiver," Kane answered quietly.
"Advanced pulmonary fibrosis. The facility records indicate she has less than forty-eight hours left."
The phone nearly slipped from my numb fingers.
Indigent care.
A hospice for the penniless.
If Daisy had taken fifty million dollars from the Thorne Group treasury, why had she lived in an unheated apartment in coal country, rationing canned soup and giving her only boiled egg to our child?
"Charter a helicopter to Scranton immediately," I ordered Kane, my throat constricting with suffocating dread.
"And place two armed private protection agents outside Annie’s bedroom door right now. Nobody enters that room until I return."
I took the stairs three at a time, moving toward the executive garage where my driver was already warming up the armored sedan.
As I rounded the landing, Gordon stepped out of his suite, still wearing his silk dressing gown, blocking the archway.
"Where are you running off to at five in the morning, little brother?" Gordon asked, his lips curving into a patronizing smirk.
"A company president doesn't abandon his post over a gutter stray."
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I didn't slow my stride.
I shoved past his shoulder with enough force to spin him against the grandfather clock, leaving him cursing in the quiet hall.
