PART 4 — The Underground Facility
PART 4 — The Underground Facility
Within forty-eight hours...
The FBI assembled a federal task force.
The hard drives exposed twenty years of crimes.
Human trafficking.
Identity theft.
Illegal medical experiments.
Witness disappearances.
Money laundering through charitable foundations.
Sterling Enterprises wasn't simply a corporation.
It was a criminal empire.
Even more disturbing...
Every document referenced the same location.
Project Haven.
Nobody knew where it was.
Until forensic analysts recovered deleted GPS coordinates hidden inside one of Harrison's videos.
An abandoned research facility beneath an old pharmaceutical campus outside Nevada.
Satellite images showed nothing unusual.
Underground scans revealed another story.
Three subterranean levels.
Restricted power systems.
Private generators.
The raid began before sunrise.
SWAT teams entered through four separate tunnels.
Agent Ross insisted I stay behind.
But hours later...
His phone rang.
He answered.
Then looked at me.
"We found him."
My knees nearly gave out.
"Alive?"
Ross nodded slowly.
"Barely."
The underground cells looked nothing like prison.
Everything was spotless.
Clinical.
White walls.
Bright lights.
Steel doors.
Doctors' offices.
Medical equipment.
Security cameras.
It looked like a hospital.
Except nobody there had chosen to stay.
Harrison was found inside Room 19.
He weighed nearly forty pounds less than when I'd last seen him.
Bruises covered both arms.
Fresh needle marks lined his wrists.
He stared blankly at the ceiling.
As if he'd forgotten how hope felt.
When doctors whispered my name...
His eyes slowly turned toward me.
For several seconds...
Nothing happened.
Then tears filled his eyes.
"Sarah..."
His voice barely existed.
"You actually came."
I couldn't answer.
Too many emotions collided at once.
Anger.
Grief.
Relief.
Betrayal.
Compassion.
Everything.
Chloe stood quietly beside me.
Holding the rag doll.
She looked at the frail stranger lying in the hospital bed.
"Daddy?"
Harrison began crying harder than I'd ever seen any grown man cry.
"I'm so sorry."
"So... so sorry."
Chloe climbed onto the chair beside him.
Then placed the old doll gently into his hands.
"You can keep her now."
"You need her more than I do."
Every nurse in the room wiped away tears.
But Harrison wasn't alone.
Thirty-two people were rescued that day.
Missing accountants.
Former executives.
Journalists.
Even...
Richard Sterling.
Victoria's father.
He wasn't dead.
He'd tried exposing the organization years earlier.
When he refused to continue financing the operation...
His own board declared him dead.
Then imprisoned him beneath his own company.
The billionaire everyone mourned...
Had spent two years locked underground.
May you like
Alive.
Waiting.
