Her throat tightened.
“I won’t let this happen to you,” she whispered.
Her arms shaking under the weight, she gathered the basket and hurried toward the only place she knew—an abandoned storage building near the railroad tracks. She had nothing. No formula. No blankets. No plan. Only stubborn resolve and a promise she made silently: they would not be alone.
What Isabella didn’t know was that just a few miles away, the entire state was searching for those babies.
Adrian Caldwell, a tech billionaire whose name filled headlines, had offered a ten-million-dollar reward for information about his kidnapped children. They had disappeared from a private hospital nursery. No one understood how. But plenty of people were eager to collect the money.
While Isabella boiled water in dented cans and tried to fashion makeshift bottles, rumors spread quickly. So did the stares. Strange men lingered near the lot. Footsteps echoed too close at night.
Danger found her sooner than she expected.