Page 44 of Girl Lost (The King Legacy #1)

CORBIN STARED AT SUMMER , his thoughts skidding out of control. Parents? Summer’s parents. No, it couldn’t be. Impossible. Yet, as he scrutinized the young woman standing before him , that spark of recognition the first time Summer walked into the room slapped him in the face.

He’d dismissed it then, telling himself he was seeing Carlie. But no, it wasn’t Carlie’s features he’d seen. It was Luna’s.

Not Luna now, not the hardened agent. This was seventeen-year-old Luna, all fire and defiance. The girl who’d stolen his heart all those years ago.

Eighteen years. A lifetime. And the girl was staring right at him.

His daughter.

He dragged in a slow, deliberate breath. The sterile white walls of the room seemed to waver, the steady beeping of the heart monitor blurring into the background noise. He gripped the metal footrail of the hospital bed.

Think. Process. Don’t let emotion take over. Years on the force had drilled that into him. Except ... this wasn’t a crime scene. This was ... family.

Luna’s hand found his, fingers intertwining. He didn’t pull away. He needed her warmth, that familiar touch, to anchor him. Her eyes, wide and disbelieving, met his. She looked at Summer, her expression a mirror to what was going on inside him.

Luna pulled Summer close. He followed, his arms circling both of them, a tangle of limbs and a lifetime of what-ifs compressed into a single, awkward embrace.

He released Summer and asked, “How? How do you know?” Corbin’s voice betrayed him there at the end.

“Stryker told me,” Summer said. “I’ve been an intern here for over a year. My parents, Everett and Patricia Reeves, they donate so much money to the clinic that Dr. Forest couldn’t exactly say no when they insisted I work here.”

“And that’s how you know Stryker?” Luna asked.

“He and Trinity came in for appointments all the time after I started. We sort of became friends. He said he knew my parents, and I told him I’d found out I wasn’t biologically their daughter when I studied genetics. I mean, it’s not that hard to figure out when your blood types don’t add up.”

Corbin glanced at Luna, and she suppressed a small smile.

Summer’s eyes darted to Trinity in the hospital bed. “Anyway, I’d see them at least once a month, sometimes more. Trinity always complained about being here so much.”

“Every single time,” Trinity confirmed, a weak smile crossing her pale face.

“So Stryker just randomly told you we’re your biological parents?” Corbin shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it wasn’t random. I started noticing things weren’t right here, you know?

Restricted areas I couldn’t access, charts for patients who didn’t exist. Men in black who’d come and go through secured entrances.

” Summer glanced toward the door. “At first I thought it might be insurance fraud or money laundering or something. But then I realized Dr. Forest was performing all these heart transplants with no paper trail.”

“Did you tell anyone? Call the police?” Luna asked.

“I went to Stryker. I knew he used to be a cop and he runs that Kingdom MMA Gym where he trains law enforcement. I figured he’d know what to do.” Summer fidgeted with the tissue in her hands. “He promised to look into it.”

“That’s when things got weird,” Trinity interjected. “He started acting all paranoid.”

“I’ve been worried about him ever since I saw him at the grocery store a few weeks ago. I was going to say hello and I wanted to see how Trinity was doing, but there was this man watching him. I recognized him from here. He followed Stryker to his car, and I thought that was weird.”

“What did you do?” Corbin pressed.

“The man got into a dark SUV and followed Stryker out of the parking lot. I hurried to my car and followed them. Not closely. I didn’t want them to see me, but I ended up losing them at a light,” Summer said.

“I waited until Stryker’s car was back at the gym, then I .

.. I left him a note under his windshield. ”

“This note?” Luna pulled out her phone and showed them the photo she’d taken of the note.

They’re watching. Don’t trust anyone.

Summer said, “Yeah, that’s it.”

Corbin asked Luna, “When did you see the note?”

“I dropped by Stryker’s after I left you at the diner. He’d offered to let me stay with him, so I didn’t see the harm in poking around. I found it tucked in his Bible.”

“The day before I left the note, he pulled me aside here at the clinic.” Her gaze moved between Luna and Corbin.

“Said he’d discovered something while investigating.

He was planning to expose it all, but first he needed to tell me something important.

That he’d known my parents for a long time and known how hard they’d tried to conceive their own child.

” Summer exhaled and continued. “He said he’d been the one to place me with my parents.

And their connection to the research center, well, he thought they might be involved in something illegal.

I just remember he mentioned the Nexus Initiative. ”

Luna’s eyes widened. “Did he say why he decided to tell you then? After all this time?”

“He said ...” Summer hesitated. “He said if anything happened to him, I needed to know the truth. That my biological parents were good people who might be the only ones who could stop what was happening here.”

Corbin felt a chill. It was all connected. The kidnapping, Chiron, the girls in the graveyard, Trinity. The bioengineered transplant had most likely saved her life, but it could also end it. Paternal protectiveness roared up inside of him.

His eyes slid to her in the hospital bed. She looked pale, her breathing shallow. Her hand pressed into her chest. Her symptoms mirrored the ones he’d been faking. “You okay?”

“My heart,” Trinity said in a strained whisper. “It’s ... it’s racing.”

He exchanged a look with Luna. This wasn’t good. They had to get Trinity out of here. To a real doctor in a real hospital. “I think we’re going to need that chopper after all.”

“The sooner the better,” Luna said.

“Blade, do you copy? We need immediate extraction. Clear skies ahead.” He covered his earpiece with his hand, listening.

Silence.

“Blade? Do you copy?” He checked his phone again. “No connection. What about you?”

Luna shook her head. “Nothing. The comms aren’t working down here.”

“We’re too deep underground,” Summer said. “No cell signal. No radio frequencies. They might even have jammers as a security precaution.”

“Then how do we get out of here?” His frustration simmered, threatening to boil over.

“Everything down here runs on a private mesh network,” Summer explained, her fingers flying over the tablet. “It’s designed to be completely isolated from the outside world. I can’t get access with this either.” She flipped the tablet, showing Corbin the red error message flashing on the display.

“We’re trapped,” Trinity said.

“Not yet,” Summer said. “I know a way out. But we have to hurry.”

“Stryker?” Luna asked, her gaze fixed on Summer. “Is he here?”

“I ... I’m not sure,” Summer said. “But if he’s been kidnapped ... like you said ... then ... yeah. He’s probably here.”

“We can’t leave him.” Trinity started to cry again. “I won’t go without him.”

Corbin inhaled, trying to steady himself. A shot at rescuing Stryker. That was something. But escaping this facility without backup and two teenage girls who needed him? It felt impossible.

“We won’t leave him,” Corbin said. “Summer, if he’s here, where would he be?”

“I overheard Dr. Forest arguing with one of the guards. They were talking about moving someone, a man, somewhere more secure.” Summer pulled up a map of the facility on her tablet.

“I think they might hold him in this area.” She pointed to a section on the lower level.

“There’s a network of access tunnels down there, probably to move patients discreetly, stuff like that.

I’ve seen those electric carts around that wing.

Why else would they need them unless they’re transporting people who can’t make it on their own. ”

“Someone who’s been drugged or restrained,” Corbin said.

“I might need one of those carts myself. I’m already exhausted,” Trinity said, rubbing her chest. Her body shuddered with another wave of chills.

Luna moved to Trinity’s side and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get you out of here. And we’ll get you the help you need to get through this, whatever it is.”

He knew this was a gamble, relying on a teenager to navigate them through a high-security facility.

But they were out of options. He turned to Luna.

“We need to figure out what to do about col lecting evidence. We need proof. Something to show the world what’s going on here. Something to shut them down.”

“Isn’t finding Stryker and Trinity held here enough?”

“That’s second-degree kidnapping,” he said. “These guys would be out in less than ten years.”

“What about one of those ... hearts?” Luna gestured toward the door. “One of the bioprinted ones.”

“Or Trinity?” Summer looked up from her tablet. “She’s evidence, isn’t she?”

“I never gave anyone permission to do this to me. To ... to Frankenstein me like this.” Trinity’s breaths were rapid. Shallow. “He cut me open. Took out my heart. Put in this ... this fake one.”

Corbin’s chest tightened. He couldn’t imagine the terror, the violation. “Yes, but that’s medical malpractice. We need more. Something more concrete. More incriminating. Something that proves Carlie and the other victims were here when they had their organs harvested.”

“There’s the data vault,” Summer said. “But I’m not sure where it is. I’ve never seen it.”

“Think, Summer. Where would they put it if they wanted to keep it safe? Cloud storage? Something we can hack?” Harlee and Jett could figure it out, he was sure of it.