Page 78 of Single Mom's Undoing

“Is she okay?”

“We hope so,” I say with a weak smile.

“You’re the father of the child,” the nurse says to Carter.

“Yes, ma’am.” He takes out a business card and gives it to her. “Please, call right away if Clara reaches out. Please.”

“Will do.”

“Thank you.”

By the time we’re back in the car, our tempers are flaring. My patience is running thin. Carter keeps cursing under his breath, trying to figure out what we’re going to do next, while Jace sits quietly in the back, tapping away at his laptop.

I glance back at him. “What are you doing?”

“I just tapped into the city’s CCTV system.”

“What?” Carter whips his head around. “Jace, that’s insanely illegal. It could get traced back to your IP.”

“Nope. I’m using a darknet-acquired VPN mask,” he replies with a cool grin. “Hey, man, we agreed. No matter what it takes. This qualifies. Besides, with the list of hotels that the nurse gave you, it helps me narrow down the grid search across the city’s cameras.”

“You can’t just stare at camera footage until you spot Clara somewhere,” I say.

Jace shakes his head. “I don’t have to. I’m pairing the grid search with a facial recognition add-on. It’s sending Clara and Matty’s pictures into the system as the algorithm combs through every frame within the parameters. We should get results soon.”

Carter pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand what possessed her to do this, Damon. We were doing good. We were together. She knew we weren’t going to let anything happen to her.”

“I hate to say this, but given what we’ve just learned about her past with Bill and what Jodie told you about his visit from last week,” I reply, carefully choosing my words, “what if he threatened her?”

“Threatened her?”

Jace nods. “He paid her off once after she saw him kill her brother. I’d say that tracks, Carter. Sorry, man, but your father is a fucking monster.”

“Jace, please,” Carter replies. “I’m not contesting that, I’m just wondering what his angle could be at this point.”

“Well, let’s look at it from his perspective, as best we can,” I suggest. “Bill has at least one dark secret, and Clara knows about it. Bill also knows that Matty is your son by blood, which makes him a Lockwood, and Bill is all about bloodlines and heirs like he’s some kind of fucking royalty.”

“He offered Clara more money to take Matty and leave, though,” Jace interjects.

“A knee-jerk reaction perhaps. His secret staying a secret matters more than anything else. He could’ve just killed her, but she is Matty’s mother. Maybe Bill still has some shred of conscience left.”

“But then Clara would’ve stayed,” Carter says. “We’re missing something.”

“Something must’ve happened between Bill’s visit from last week and the night Clara decided to leave,” Jace mutters.

“That makes more sense,” I reply.

“And I think I know why she was so scared,” he adds, turning his laptop around so we can all see what’s on the screen. “I found footage of her at a motel on the edge of Baker City. It’s got a direct route to the hospital. This is Clara checking in a couple of nights ago.”

I watch footage of her as she pays for the room and gets a key from the motel receptionist. Jace keeps tapping on the mousepad, following her around from one camera to another. Slowly but surely, we retrace her steps from the moment she checked in, my heart tightening with each passing frame.

“She seems fine,” I say.

“Give it a second,” Jace replies and speeds through the footage.

That’s when we see it. The dreadful moment in which she and Matty are accosted outside her room. The woman jabs her shoulder with what looks like a syringe. The man takes Clara, while the woman takes Matty. My blood boils as the scene unfolds.

“This happened yesterday morning,” Jace says.