Chapter 12 - EVELYN’S APPOINTMENT Evelyn disappeared from police protection during transport.
A vehicle struck the rear of the unmarked police car at an intersection. In the confusion, a man wearing an officer’s uniform opened her door and pulled her into a waiting ambulance.
The ambulance carried a cloned registration belonging to Ray Mercer’s unit.
The network continued using trusted identities as disguises.
Piper received a call from Evelyn’s phone.
Matthew spoke with Thomas Lawson’s voice.
“Doctor Lawson, your mother has missed too many appointments.”
“Let her go.”
“She left me first.”
“You were a child. What she did was unforgivable. Killing her will not return your life.”
“I’m not going to kill her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Give her the treatment she signed for me.”
A video appeared.
Evelyn sat restrained inside a mobile clinic. An IV line entered her arm. Matthew stood beyond the camera, face hidden.
Piper’s mother looked smaller than she ever had.
“I’m sorry,” Evelyn whispered.
Matthew answered in his own voice for the first time.
“Which year?”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
“All of them.”
The honesty made him hesitate.
Piper used the pause to keep him speaking while Bell traced the signal.
Nathaniel entered the frame.
He was older than Leonard, with a tremor in one hand and cold, analytical eyes.
“Piper,” he said, “your brother’s treatment can still be completed.”
“He is not your patient. He is your prisoner.”
“Matthew chose to stay.”
“A child trained into dependence cannot consent to the system that shaped him.”
Nathaniel smiled faintly.
“You sound like your father.”
“You poisoned him.”
“He endangered decades of work.”
“He tried to save his son.”
“He tried too late.”
The mobile clinic was moving along a mountain road. Ray recognized the background through the video window: an abandoned quarry route near the Canadian border.
Police established roadblocks.
Nathaniel noticed the change in engine speed.
“You traced us.”
“You called a toxicologist and expected me not to study the environment?”
For the first time, he looked annoyed.
Matthew moved toward the IV pump.
Evelyn’s breathing changed.
Piper shouted instructions.
“Matthew, the dose is causing bronchospasm. Stop the infusion.”
Nathaniel told him to continue.
Matthew looked between the pump and Evelyn.
He had been raised to obey the doctor.
But Evelyn’s apology had changed something.
He stopped the infusion.
Nathaniel struck him.
The phone fell sideways.
The screen showed Matthew fighting his mentor while Evelyn struggled against the restraints.
The ambulance swerved.
Then the video went black.
Police found the vehicle crashed beside the quarry road.
Evelyn was alive.
Matthew had vanished.
Nathaniel lay unconscious with a head injury.
The rear doors stood open toward the forest.
Inside the ambulance, Piper found one medical bag missing.
It contained enough neurological compound to expose dozens of people.
Matthew had also taken Thomas’s complete archive from the underground laboratory.
He left a note for Piper:
May you like
YOU SAVE THEM ONE AT A TIME. I’LL SHOW THEM ALL AT ONCE.
👉 Matthew escaped with the toxin and decades of evidence, planning an exposure far larger than the lake-house party.
