Page 37 of Unnatural (Men and Monsters #2)

Mark knocked on the door of the duplex, the shouts and laughter of children playing ringing through the air from the park across the street. Something savory was cooking in one of the units, and the smell wafted to him below.

The door opened a crack, and a tiny face peeked out, a little boy with dark skin and a short-cropped Afro staring curiously up at him.

Mark smiled. “Hi. Is your mom home?”

The little boy shook his head, not offering more.

“Your grandma?” The woman he was there to see was in her fifties, plenty old enough to be a grandma, though from the woman’s name, he’d assumed she was Middle Eastern. “Is there an adult here?” Mark finally tried.

The little boy nodded.

“Can I talk to him or her?”

The little boy nodded again and then closed the door.

Mark was hopeful the boy was going to get this unknown adult, though he couldn’t be sure.

A moment later though, the door was pulled open again, and an older woman with dark swept-back hair laced with gray stood there, wearing a similar curious expression to the one the little boy had given him.

“Salma Ibrahim?” he asked, taking his badge from his pocket and holding it up for her.

“Agent Mark Gallagher.” This was one of the people Autumn Clancy’s social worker, Chantelle, had been able to tell him Autumn had been searching for.

The woman who, as far as Chantelle knew, Autumn had never found.

She frowned, her eyes on his badge. “Yes,” she confirmed. “I’m Salma. Agent? What can I do for you?”

“There’s not a problem,” he assured her and saw her shoulders drop a fraction. “I just have some questions about a case, if I might take a few minutes of your time?”

“A case…” She glanced behind her, and Mark heard not just one child’s voice but several, coming from a room beyond. “Yes, yes, of course. Come in.”

She opened the door wider, and Mark stepped inside.

Salma closed the door and gestured to him to follow her. “I run an in-home day care,” she said. “Let me just get the children set up with a show.” She waved her hand at a sofa in the front room she’d led him to. “Have a seat, and I’ll be right back.”

Mark sat down, glancing around the room.

It was clean and neat, but the furniture was obviously older.

It might not be stylish, per se—even if Mark couldn’t exactly define stylish other than what he’d seen on the covers of the Pottery Barn catalogs his wife received in the mail—but the space felt cozy and welcoming, with neatly folded throw blankets and a whole slew of family photos on a table in front of the window.

Salma came back into the room, apologizing for the wait, though she’d only been gone three or four minutes, and took a seat in the chair across from Mark. “What is this about, Agent…”

“Gallagher,” he said. “But please, call me Mark. I’m working on a case, and the name of a woman who may or may not be involved came to light. Autumn Clancy. You would have known her as Autumn Sterling.”

Salma brought her hand to her mouth as her eyes widened. “Autumn?” she breathed. “Oh my goodness. She’s alive, isn’t she?”

“She is. Did you think she was deceased, Ms. Ibrahim?”

“Salma,” she murmured, turning her head and staring out the window for a moment. “No, not really.” She turned her attention back to Mark. “Autumn was an ADHM baby. She lived at the hospital I worked at, nine years ago now.”

“Yes. ADHM babies didn’t generally have a good prognosis.”

“No,” Salma said sadly. “It was all but a death sentence. Thank the good Lord that time is past. How is Autumn?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met her.” He’d called her place of employment though and found that she had taken a short leave of absence. Curious timing. Only he was all but certain that it wasn’t curious at all.

“Oh. I see.”

“Like I said, her name’s come up in the course of an investigation.”

“What kind of investigation?”

“I’m afraid I can’t disclose the details.”

“How did you connect her to me?”

“I talked to the woman who was once her social worker, or at least inherited her case. Autumn was adopted out when she was fourteen. Her social worker told me that among the other reasons Autumn has been contacting her for years is that she was looking for you.”

Again, Salma’s hand came to her mouth as tears formed. “Oh, oh dear. Oh, sweet Autumn.” She closed her eyes, and it appeared she was in pain.

“You knew her well then?”

“Very well. I was her nurse at Mercy Hospital. I’d cared for her since she was a toddler.

” She paused for a moment, obviously gathering her thoughts.

“I was dismissed, and they didn’t even give me the opportunity to say goodbye to any of my patients.

I’ve always wondered how that affected them… I’ve wondered so many things…”

“Can you tell me about the reason for your dismissal?”

Something fiery came into her eyes. “They feared me. So they terminated my employment and made sure I was reported to the board and stripped of my license. They made sure I could never work as a nurse again.” The fire was still there in her eyes, but so was an edge of what he could only call grief.

She’d obviously mourned the loss of the children she’d cared for and her career. Her calling, perhaps.

“What did they fear, Salma?”

A small child came into the room, scampering to Salma. “Jamal no nice,” she declared.

“Jamal wasn’t nice to you?” Salma asked, opening her arms wide. “I’ll talk to him. Come here, pumpkin.”

The little girl hurried into Salma’s arms, and she lifted the tiny girl and sat her on her lap.

The child had a pacifier around her neck, and she popped it into her mouth, lying back on Salma’s chest. Salma stroked the little girl’s hair distractedly.

Mark had a vision of his own daughter when she was that age.

She’d had a pacifier too…they’d had a bear of a time getting her to give it up…

“What they feared,” Salma said, picking up the conversation where it’d left off and bringing Mark back into the present, “was that I was going to expose them. And I tried. Believe me. They sent a whole fleet of lawyers to my door to threaten me. Then they accused me of stealing, said I was a liar who was trying to stir up trouble to hide my own crimes. I tried to go public, but no one wanted to stand with me against a hospital administration and a pharmaceutical company. I fought. I really did. But in the end, they won. I had no career, no money, and my reputation was ruined. It took such a toll on my marriage that that ended too.” Her mouth set as she looked away.

“I started using my maiden name and opened an in-home day care. Thank goodness my friends and neighbors stuck by me for the most part. And I’ve been taking care of their little ones ever since.

” She smiled though it appeared sad, her arms tightening around the child in her arms. “I get to love these children, but I didn’t help the others. ”

Mark sat back, looking at the little girl in Salma’s lap, eyes half-closed, expression sleepy as she snuggled into the woman. “What did you see? What did you try to expose?”

She took a deep breath, her hand still smoothing the child’s bangs off her forehead.

“I got a look at Autumn’s chart. Not the one we were allowed to see but the one Dr. Heathrow kept.

He left it in Autumn’s room after one of his visits, and he was back lickety-split for it, but not before I’d opened it and read what it said.

I already suspected…like I said, I’d cared for her for a long time. ”

“Suspected?”

“That she wasn’t born with ADHM in her system at all. I just didn’t know that they knew it. I hadn’t considered that level of evil. Until I looked at his file.”

“I…see.” Mark frowned. “So you believe they lied about her medical status? To what end?”

She met his eyes, her hand stilling on the toddler’s head. The little girl had surrendered to sleep. “So that they could experiment on her.”

Mark’s shoulders bunched.

Salma huffed out a small breath, her shoulders going back. “I know it’s difficult to believe these types of things happen—”

“You’d be surprised how open I am to the possibility,” Mark murmured as he willed his muscles to relax. “Can you tell me more about how you concluded that the hospital was experimenting on her?”

“And others. Not just her, but I didn’t get a look at anyone else’s file.

” She chewed at the inside of her mouth for a moment.

“Some of them, most of them , were legitimately sick. They had tumors so large you could see them right under their skin. But there were others, the lucky ones, they said, who hadn’t yet shown signs of the disease.

Only…Autumn, she was healthy . It was the damn medication that was making her sick. ”

“At the time, did you think that was what was making her well? Or at least keeping her that way as long as possible?”

“Yes, because that’s what they said.” She speared him with her intense gaze again.

“But she went off the medication, didn’t she?

And if she’s alive, I’m assuming she’s well.

Miraculously cured.” The sarcasm in her voice was clear.

Before he could ask another question, she went on.

“I never told anyone this because I didn’t want Autumn to be targeted, but I suppose that’s no longer a concern.

I was the one who suggested she go off the medication. ”

“You mean…while she was in the hospital? While she was being treated?”

“ Yes. I knew it was that damn cocktail Dr. Heathrow brewed in his lab. I knew it was. No ADHM diagnosis was keeping that baby girl sick. It was his medication and only his medication. I’m a nurse.

Or…I was. But I’m also a mother. And a mother knows when her children are naturally sick… and when they’re being poisoned.”