Chapter 3 - ALDEN RECOGNIZED THE RING BEFORE HE SAW THE CHILDREN
Alden arrived without press.
Without board members.
Without his brother.
He brought one attorney and one driver.
At the hospital entrance, corporate security attempted to join him.
Alden refused.
That mattered later.
Detective Ortiz met him upstairs.
“Mr. Vale.”
“Are they alive?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes.
“Both?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see them?”
“Not yet.”
Then she placed a clear evidence pouch on the table.
Inside:
The ring.
Alden recognized the scratch near the crest immediately.
Mara had dropped it on stone stairs when she was nineteen.
He had offered to replace it.
She refused.
“Granddad’s ring survived eighty years,” she had said. “It can survive me.”
Alden sat.
“That belongs to my daughter.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Seven months ago.”
“Why?”
He hated the answer.
“We argued.”
“About?”
“My company.”
“What kind of argument?”
“Serious.”
Detective Ortiz waited.
Alden looked toward the neonatal unit.
“Mara was our senior vice president of translational medicine.”
“Was?”
“She took leave.”
“Voluntarily?”
“That is what I was told.”
Ortiz’s eyes sharpened.
“By who?”
“My brother.”
Conrad Vale.
Chief operating officer.
Alden’s younger brother.
The man who had run Vale Therapeutics beside him for thirty-one years.
“What was the argument about?”
Alden rubbed his face.
“A neonatal drug.”
“Which one?”
“Vela-9.”
Detective Ortiz wrote it down.
Vela-9 was one of Vale’s most celebrated programs.
A medication intended to stabilize premature infants with severe inflammatory respiratory complications.
It had received accelerated review.
The company expected approval within months.
Mara had objected to something in the safety data.
Alden had been in the middle of negotiations with investors, hospitals and regulators.
Conrad told him Mara was exhausted.
Pregnant?
Alden had not known.
That realization arrived suddenly.
He looked toward the NICU again.
“Can you determine if I’m related to them?”
“Eventually.”
“I’ll provide DNA now.”
The detective nodded.
Then asked:
“Who would have access to your family security insignia?”
“Hundreds of employees.”
“And the ring?”
“Only Mara.”
A nurse entered.
“Mr. Vale?”
“Yes?”
“One of the babies is stabilizing.”
“And the other?”
“Still critical.”
He followed her to the observation window.
Two impossibly small bodies lay beneath warming equipment.
One had a nasal respiratory interface.
The smaller boy barely moved.
Alden placed one hand against the glass.
He felt nothing dramatic.
No instant grandfather recognition.
Only horror.
Because if these were Mara’s sons, then someone had known she was pregnant.
Someone had known where she delivered.
And somebody connected closely enough to the Vale organization to wear company security insignia had left them in a blizzard.
Then he remembered something.
Three weeks before Mara disappeared from family meetings, she had said:
“If anything happens to me, Conrad will tell you I’m unstable.”
Alden had become angry.
“Mara, stop.”
“No, Dad.”
“He keeps feeding you conclusions because he knows you’re too busy to check the underlying files.”
“I trust my brother.”
She had looked at him strangely.
“That’s exactly what scares me.”
Alden had walked away.
Now he stood outside a NICU watching two newborns fight for breath.
His phone vibrated.
Conrad.
Alden answered.
“Alden, where are you?”
“How did you know I was awake?”
Pause.
“Security called.”
Interesting.
“Why?”
“Police contacted corporate security about a stolen family item.”
Not exactly.
Alden said:
“Mara’s ring was found.”
Silence.
For less than a second.
Then Conrad:
“Where?”
“With two newborn boys.”
Longer silence.
Then:
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
Alden looked through the glass.
“Doesn’t it?”
“Mara could have lost the ring months ago.”
“Where is she?”
“We’ve been through this.”
“Where?”
“Switzerland.”
“Which city?”
“You know which—”
“No.”
Alden’s voice lowered.
“I know what you told me.”
Conrad stopped.
Alden continued:
“Which city?”
“Zurich.”
“Address?”
“Alden.”
“Hospital? Apartment? Hotel?”
Silence.
For seven months, his brother had said Mara was recovering privately in Zurich.
Alden had never been given an address.
Mara supposedly refused contact.
He had accepted it.
Because accepting it hurt less than admitting his daughter might hate him.
Detective Ortiz watched his face change.
Alden ended the call.
Then said:
“I need to correct something.”
“What?”
“My daughter isn’t missing because she stopped answering me.”
He looked at the babies.
“She may have been missing because I stopped asking the right people where she went.”
At 4:31 a.m., preliminary kinship results returned.
The laboratory physician spoke carefully.
“The genetic markers are strongly consistent with you being the biological maternal grandfather of both infants.”
Alden sat down.
Twin boys.
His grandsons.
Alive.
Then Detective Ortiz placed a photograph in front of him.
Security-camera image.
A black SUV beside the abandoned station entrance.
License plate obscured by snow.
The man exiting wore a black overcoat.
On the lapel:
A silver falcon.
Alden stared.
He knew the coat.
Vale Executive Protection.
Custom issue.
May you like
And only eleven men had received that specific winter model.
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