Hope House (17 page)

The leader
squealed as he ran, and the rest of them followed, their monstrous hooves beating the dirt into the ground, invading the night with thunder.

She shone the flashlight beam along the ground, making sure they were all gone.

Something gold flickered in the light. She scanned the area again.

Maison D’Espoir.

Martine gasped and stepped back. Gold letters against a blue Maison duffel bag.

Boni.

She held her breath as she moved the light over the grass where the boars had been feasting.

The boars could not have been there long because Boni’s body was intact, thank God. They had not soiled her. She had not been eaten like a dead dog in the woods. Her body had not been disrespected.

Martine knelt down and saw the hole in her friend’s forehead. The back of her scalp was stif
f and sticky.

Boni had been shot and left for dead.

Where was the baby? Martine flashed the light all around the woods, through the trees, under the bushes.

“
Bebe! Ki kote ou ye? Ki kote ou ye?”
Baby where are you?

He was gone. If these boars had not taken his body, a
nother animal surely had.

“
Anmwe! Anmwe!”
she shouted for help but no one answered. Except for the snorts of angry running boars and her own screams, the woods remained silent. 

Mr. Puglisi had done this! Had shot Boni and probably shot the baby too and dragged them off the road to hide what he had done. No one else would kill a mother and infant. He had killed Martine’s clubfoot baby years ago, and now he had killed another helpless one—and its mother as well.

Mr. Puglisi with the powerful family who controlled and ruined all the lives at Maison D’Espoir. Who sent people off to die just because he could. 

Martine ran as fast as she could until a clearing appeared. She breathed a sigh of relief to discover it was the road. She would send someone for Boni’s body later. Now though, she had to return to Maison D’Espoir, even if it took all night. She had to tell Dr. Tad what Mr. Puglisi had done.

Chapter Six

1.

New Age Adoption Agency, rear of building, late evening, Thursday, February 9
th

Gloria had been waiting outside in Kurt’s small black Toyota truck for a half hour. He had pulled the truck behind the building on a dark side street and into an alleyway, and finally to the loading dock where he ordered her to stay put while he made his way inside. She wasn’t happy about being a lookout while be broke into New Age offices but their options to prove the truth were limited. Kurt had said he’d be as quick as possible. He’d brought his phone with him but instructed her to use it only if she saw Mick’s men or the police. Building management wouldn’t bother her. He said an insider confided in him that there was only one guard for the whole building this time of night and that he only looked out on the loading dock at the beginning and end of his shift. She wondered how Kurt gained the confidence of so many strangers but it was best not to know.

Gloria had the window down and listened for any sounds not belonging to the normal ordinary hum of the city. Normal and ordinary being relative terms given her situation. She looked at her phone to check the time. Twelve-thirty.
What’s taking so long? Where is he?

After ten more minutes of sitting and waiting, she
had
to go inside. It didn’t feel safe out here. She felt foolish doing so but she donned the black windbreaker and ski hat Kurt had left for her. He’d insisted she stay in the truck but said if she got spooked and needed to run that she was to put on the clothes.

Gloria looked around outside again but still saw nothing. Her jacket rustled when she walked and the hat made her head itch. She held her phone tight and walked toward the back door Kurt had propped open with
a crushed paper cup.

Once inside, she found herself standing in a large room that she assumed was a delivery and storage area. No black marble here or fountains like in the fancy lobby she’d been escorted out of days before. Painted concrete walls and a large freight elevator provided all the aesthetics this section had to offer. She looked up and saw an interior camera covered with a towel. Smart thinking. Off to the left was a gray door, the same color as the walls. It was propped open with
another cup.

She eased the door open and heard voices. Two men. Their footsteps grew fainter as they ascended the stairs. “Jesus, seven floors? Why can’t we just take the elevator?”

“Same reason he didn’t, Dickhead. Just keep going. Shut your mouth and hurry up. We have to get in, shoot, and get out.”

“What
if he steals something? Files or a computer?”

“He hasn’t been there long enough. There won’t be any files. Shut up, already. Run. Let’s go.” Their voices grew quiet and their footsteps quickened.

Gloria wondered how they had gotten in. Not the way she and Kurt had. That meant the front door. Maybe they bribed the guard up front. She flashed to the security guard the other day, the one with the crazy sister, and hoped it wasn’t his shift. Whoever had been manning the front desk on the late shift was probably dead right now. At the very least knocked out.

She had to warn Kurt. They, or people just like them, had tried to kill her a few times already. It would be a bonus if they could get Gloria and Kurt in one night.

She closed the door, keeping the coffee cup in place. Then she stepped back outside and clamored into the truck where she dialed Kurt.

It rang twice then she hung up. Her signal. She slid down in the seat. Gloria cursed herself for never having learned to drive a standard. She should  be poised in the driver’s seat, waiting to drive them off to safety. Instead she just sat in her black coat and hat, trying to blend in with the night.

Gloria watched the side door and waited. And waited. Was he dead? All of a sudden Kurt raced toward her from in front of the building. He jumped in the truck, tossed her a stack of files and put the truck in gear. As they spun out, two men burst out the side door. Something that sounded like a rock smashed against the back window. Then another.

“What’s that?”

“We’re being shot at, Gloria. They were quicker than I thought. Stay down.”

She felt the truck take another blow but the rear window held.

“Thank God they keep missing us,” she said, still slouched.

“They’re not missing. It’s bulletproof glass. I need it in my line of work.”

“Are you okay, Kurt?” she asked.

“I’m fine.” He talked to her but looked in his mirror the whole time. “By the time they get to their car we’ll be long gone. Morons.”

“How did you get out? They were coming up the stairs after you.”

“I took the elevator. When I got your call I grabbed the files and ran out. They spotted me as I got in the elevator but they were too late. They thought running down the stai
rs after me would be quicker than getting in another car.”

“What took so long?”

He didn’t reply to that. He just said, “You might want to look at the files. See if they’re worth risking our lives over.”

It had been a few minutes since the truck had been f
ired upon so Gloria sat up, just a little. She pulled her cap off and put it on the seat. Kurt looked ahead, then in his mirror, then back again. He accelerated and took a quick right turn. Then a hard left.

Gloria had her belt on but was still thrown around the front seat. “Sorry,” he said. “They’re after us again. Surprised they caught up. Just hold tight. A few more turns and we should be okay.”

Those few more turns were more than a few so Gloria squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her knees against her chest. Finally the car went straight and steady again.

“Read the files. The names of the adoptive mothers,” he said. “It’s why I was in there so long. I found the file room. No lock. That Mick isn’t too bright. At first, I didn’t know where to begin because it was a damn big file room. But there was one cabinet that drew my attention. Guess how the drawers were labeled?”

“I don’t know. ‘Stolen babies?’ ”

“No. The letters GH.”

“The drawers held the contents of the letters G through H?”

“No. How about Gloria Hanes?  GH-1, GH-2. Five drawers in all. There may have been more in another cabinet but I didn’t look around any
more after that. I started reading the files and couldn’t believe it.”

“What did they say?”

“See for yourself. Open the glove compartment. There’s a light in there.”

Gloria opened the first file. A baby girl born two weeks after Alison.

She did a double take when she saw the street address of the twenty-year-old mother from Topeka, Kansas: 83 Cherokee Drive. That was Gloria’s home address growing up in Bradfield, MA. Her parents still lived there. The biological mother’s name was Lynne Hanes.

“Lynne is my middle name.”

“I know. I did a full background check on you. Gloria Lynne Hanes-Carpenter. Then you legally dropped Carpenter after your divorce. I also knew that was your address growing up. Look at the next file.”

She opened it up and held it under the light. Gloria read it out loud.

“Hannah Parker, eighty-three Cherokee Drive, Sacramento, California. Female child born, August 4, a month after Alison same year.”

“Hannah Parker sounds a lot like Hanes-Carpenter and the street address is the same.”

She opened another file. “Lori Ganes, eighty-three Cherokee Drive, Biloxi, Missouri, male child born, September 12. Same year. It’s another play on my name. But I don’t understand. Why are all these children attributed to some form of my name with my address? Oh my God, do you think they stole all my eggs when I was under? Is that what this was all about?”

It hadn’t occurred to her before but it made sense. Take her eggs and sell them.

“No.”

“Why? It fits. Don’t you see? They could have scraped out all my egg follicles and harvested them into eggs.”

“No it doesn’t fit. If these were your children, from eggs they stole and harvested from you, then the DNA would show it. You said the DNA proved Alison wasn’t your daughter.”

“So they said.”

“I checked the records and I saw the reports. Alison is not yours. It’s something like a twenty-five percent match. I don’t know what they did but it has something to do with you.”

“Did they clone me?” That thought horrified her. A bunch of Glorias running around, living with strangers.

“That would be a hundred percent match, Gloria. Come on, don’t you watch all those nighttime dramas?”

“Yeah, that’s right. So what is it?” She admitted what she felt must be the truth.  “Maybe I do have a secret sibling somewhere who had all these kids.”

“No. Even a sibling, if there was one, couldn’t have all these children so close in age. Anyway, it’s your name and address Puglisi is playing with. Read the other two files.”

She read these last to herself. The pattern remained. Gia Carp had given birth to a boy September 7
th
  year after the others. 83 Cherokee Drive, Cheyenne, Wyoming. Cari Penter had a female October 9
th
. Same year. 83 Cherokee Drive New Orleans, Louisiana.

“Maybe Puglisi had the hots for you and just used variations of your name over and over for the hell of it as part of a fraud scheme.”

“But there are real children involved. It’s not a pyramid scam. They must have come from somewhere. This seems like an awful lot of healthy infants being given up by what I assume are healthy mothers.”

“I don’t know enough about the adoption business to say either way.”

“Are these kids all related to me?” She closed the last of the five folders he had managed to steal.

“I doubt it. How could they be?”

“Why not just use the biological mothers’ real names? The records are sealed anyway.”

“There’s got to be a reason he used
your
name,
your
address. An explanation as to why Alison Gander is related to you. There’s got to be a common denominator we’re missing with all these kids, not to mention all the ones we don’t know about. I tell you there were file drawers full of these.”

Gloria remembered something and checked the files again.

“What?” She saw him look at her from the corner of her eye.

She opened and shut the files then looked at him. “Hope House. All the babies were born at Hope House in Windy Key, Florida.”

“All of them?”

“All of these at least.”

“So the biological mothers are from all around the country, granted those addresses are probably bogus, but the births were all in Florida? Not just Florida but in the Keys all at the same clinic?”

“That’s odd enough but the name Hope House. Sound familiar?”

“No.”

“Maison D’Espoir.”

“The place in Haiti where Tad Boucher went to work. What about it?”

“Maison D’Espoir is French for Hope House. House of Hope actually. There’s your common denominator. There’s no w
ay Tad Boucher just happens to work in Haiti at a place whose name translates into Hope House; and then Mick, who owns the adoption agency, has all of his adoptees born in a place called Hope House in Florida.”

The truck accelerated. “We’re going there right now.”

“Where?”

“Windy Key. It’s two hours if I keep up this speed. You oughta get some shut eye while I drive. Gonna be a busy day tomorrow.”

“What do you think we’ll find there?”

“I’m guessing a clinic and a bunch of pregnant girls. We’ll just storm the place and demand to know the girls’ real names.”

“But how do we go about doing that?”

“I’ll get pushy!”

“Pushy? Not like at the hotel the other night, I hope.”

He met her eyes. “I wasn’t given any choice outside your door.”

“I know.”

“Just be assured that by the end of tomorrow we’ll have answers. Maybe the doctors there won’t tell us a thing but we’ll get it out of the patients.”

Gloria put her head down and tried to absorb the probable reality. “Maybe  Alison isn’t my daughter. This is so much bigger than one little girl.”

Kurt reached over and took her hand. In the dim light from the dash he was hard to see, but his eyes locked with hers. “No, I don’t think she is. But she is related to you and something, karma or God or whatever, brought you two together. And that’s the reason the Puglisis are trying to kill you.”

“I know we’re both in this thing up to our collective necks,” she began, “like it or not.”

“They’re doing something covert,” he agreed, nodding. “and we’re going to find out what. It’s not just about your single tragedy anymore, or wanting closure, or my working for a client. We’re bringing the Puglisis down once and for all, and shutting down this operation, whatever it is. We have to. Or die trying. It’s the right thing to do.”

A thrill ran through her. She had always thought the archetype of a sexy, masculine hero who killed for the common good was just a symbol, that save for literature or in movies no one was really like that.