Chapter 24 · Mother Key

Charlotte's hand was still on the gun when Marcus said the coordinates a second time. She didn't pull the trigger. She wanted to. The engineer was sitting three feet away with a tablet on his knees and blood under his nails—hers, from four loops back—and Marcus had that look he always got when he knew more than he was saying.

But the numbers matched the partial sequence she'd pulled from the warehouse server two nights ago, the one she thought was a storage unit.

She wasn't that lucky.

"Say it again," she said.

Marcus didn't blink. "Sublevel morgue. County hospital. The wing they sealed off in 2019."

Her stomach dropped. She knew that wing. She'd walked past it a hundred times when Lisa was six and kept getting bronchitis every winter. The hospital closed the sub-basement after the flood, rerouted the morgue, said the old cold-storage was contaminated. Nobody went down there. Which made it exactly the kind of place you'd stash something you didn't want found.

Or someone.

The engineer tapped the tablet. "Biometric lock. Retinal and thermal signature. It's set to one person."

"Let me guess," Charlotte said.

Marcus leaned back against the wall, arms crossed.