Chapter 2 - The Envelope in Her Work Bag
Abigail refused the ambulance until the paramedic threatened to call Matteo back.
She finally allowed herself to be examined at St. Catherine’s Medical Center, where fetal monitoring showed a strong heartbeat and no immediate sign of distress.
The baby was safe.
That should have calmed her.
It didn’t.
Two detectives waited outside her room.
So did Matteo.
He had changed into a dry shirt, but rain still darkened his hair.
Abigail looked at him.
“You knew that car wasn’t random.”
“I suspected.”
“Why?”
Matteo closed the door.
“Because Richard Sinclair has spent twenty-five years making problems disappear.”
She instinctively touched the brown envelope beside her hospital bag.
Matteo noticed.
“What is that?”
“Nothing.”
“Abigail.”
“Grace gave it to me.”
She explained.
Matteo read every document twice.
His calm disappeared.
“Where is Grace?”
“At work.”
“Call her.”
Grace didn’t answer.
They tried again.
Voicemail.
Matteo stood immediately.
His security chief, Ethan Cole, entered before he could call him.
“We checked the SUV.”
“And?”
“Stolen plates. Vehicle recovered abandoned five miles east. Interior wiped.”
Matteo handed him Grace’s name.
“Find her.”
Abigail pushed herself upright.
“She has a six-year-old son.”
Ethan nodded once and left.
Twenty minutes later, Abigail’s phone rang.
Grace.
She answered instantly.
“Grace?”
Only breathing.
Then a frightened whisper.
“Abby, listen to me. Don’t come home.”
“What happened?”
“They were in your apartment.”
Abigail froze.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Two men. I saw them leaving when I drove past.”
“Where are you?”
“I picked up Noah from my sister. We’re driving.”
“Go to the police.”
“I don’t trust hotel security, and one of those men wore a Sinclair security jacket.”
Matteo heard every word.
“Grace,” he said loudly enough for the phone.
She became silent.
“It’s Matteo Romano. Drive to Romano Harbor Hotel. Underground entrance. I’ll have security waiting.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t trust anyone tonight. But there are twenty-seven cameras at that entrance and none controlled by Sinclair.”
Grace hesitated.
“Fine.”
Abigail exhaled.
Matteo turned toward her.
“You’re not going home.”
“I can’t afford a hotel.”
“You’re not paying.”
“I don’t accept charity.”
“It’s not charity.”
“What is it?”
“Witness protection with better pillows.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
For a fraction of a second the terror loosened.
Then she remembered her apartment.
Her crib.
The secondhand dresser she'd painted white.
The tiny blue blankets.
Everything she had spent months preparing.
Someone had entered it.
Searching.
“For those papers?”
“Probably.”
“But they’re just employee records.”
Matteo shook his head.
“No. They’re a map.”
He pointed to one recurring code beside employee health-insurance adjustments.
MTR-17.
Abigail had assumed it was payroll notation.
Matteo recognized it.
“Maternal Transfer Reserve.”
“What does that mean?”
“A fund.”
Sinclair Children’s Hope Foundation had established MTR seventeen years earlier.
Publicly, it covered prenatal care for low-income hospital workers.
Matteo’s investigators had reviewed the charity years ago during a failed hotel acquisition.
The fund claimed to spend almost forty million dollars annually.
Yet fewer than twelve percent of documented employees received assistance.
“So where did the rest go?” Abigail asked.
“That is what Richard Sinclair doesn’t want anyone asking.”
The next morning, Ethan arrived with Grace and Noah.
Grace looked exhausted.
Noah clung to a dinosaur backpack.
“The apartment was trashed,” Grace said. “Not robbed. TV still there. Laptop there. They searched papers.”
“Did they find anything?”
“No.”
Grace pulled a flash drive from inside Noah’s toy dinosaur.
“I keep backups.”
Matteo almost smiled.
“You and I are going to get along.”
The drive contained far more than the brown envelope.
Grace had copied folders she never understood.
Vendor reimbursements.
Hospital grants.
Pregnancy accommodations.
Employee settlements.
And hundreds of coded payments to something called New Dawn Placement Services.
Abigail frowned.
“Placement services?”
Grace opened one file.
Pregnant employee.
Age twenty-two.
Single.
Insurance terminated.
Emergency housing assistance approved.
Then a New Dawn payment for $68,000.
Another employee.
Twenty-six.
No family listed.
Premature delivery.
Payment: $91,500.
There were dozens.
Matteo called his forensic accountant.
Two hours later, the answer arrived.
New Dawn Placement Services was not an employment agency.
It was a private adoption brokerage.
Abigail felt sick.
“What does an adoption company have to do with hotel employees?”
Nobody answered.
Grace searched names.
Jessica Torres.
The waitress who supposedly quit.
Her file appeared.
Seven months pregnant when terminated.
Insurance canceled.
Emergency admission at Sinclair Memorial Hospital.
Then:
INFANT PLACEMENT COMPLETE.
Grace covered her mouth.
“No.”
Abigail stared.
Jessica had returned once after disappearing.
She had come into the employee cafeteria crying.
Grace remembered asking about the baby.
Jessica said quietly, “He didn’t make it.”
But the file didn't say death.
It said placement.
They called Jessica.
Disconnected.
They searched social media.
Nothing in two years.
Another worker, Hannah Price.
Same pattern.
Insurance canceled.
Sinclair hospital admission.
New Dawn payment.
Placement completed.
Abigail’s hands started shaking.
“Were they taking their babies?”
Matteo’s face was stone.
“We don’t know that yet.”
But everyone understood the possibility.
Richard Sinclair’s foundation publicly rescued vulnerable pregnant women.
Privately, its companies may have been creating vulnerable pregnant women by terminating their employment and insurance.
Then moving their newborns through a profitable adoption network.
“This is trafficking,” Grace whispered.
“Potentially,” Matteo said. “We need proof before using that word.”
Abigail suddenly remembered something.
Her hospital.
Her obstetrician.
The maternity assistance program her manager encouraged her to enroll in.
She had signed forms three months earlier because the hotel said the foundation could reduce her delivery expenses.
Her blood turned cold.
“Matteo.”
He looked at her.
“I’m in MTR.”
The room went silent.
Grace grabbed the laptop.
She searched Abigail Foster.
A file appeared immediately.
FOSTER, ABIGAIL — PRIORITY CLASS A.
Estimated delivery date.
Blood type.
Income.
Marital status.
No spouse recorded.
No living parents.
Next of kin blank.
Then a line none of them understood.
INFANT COMPATIBILITY: EXCEPTIONAL.
Under projected value:
$240,000.
Abigail stopped breathing.
Matteo read it again.
“They put a price on my baby.”
No one answered.
Then another document opened automatically.
It had been updated that morning.
SUBJECT COMPROMISED. ACCELERATE DELIVERY PROTOCOL.
Abigail stared at those words.
She was thirty weeks pregnant.
Her baby was not supposed to arrive for another ten.
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Someone inside the Sinclair system had just ordered otherwise.
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