Page 168
Ezra brings up the files in Wes’s evidence folder and searches for Crossroads.
It appears in ordinary places first. Donation receipts. A county health partnership. A flyer for free suppressant screenings. Then Ezra finds the same clinic name in an inventory recovered from the Hollow Saints’s annex.
He enlarges the scan. Five identification numbers appear beside the clinic header. There are no patient names, only intake codes and dates.
Theo goes quiet.
I turn toward him. “What?”
His gaze remains on the screen. “I’ve seen that logo.”
“Where?”
“Mobile van.” He rubs a hand over his beard. “Years ago. Hammer sent hurt people there when a hospital would ask too many questions.”
“You knew the clinic?” I ask.
“Not the name until I saw the symbol. Blue road crossing a white circle.”
Ezra zooms in on the document header. The logo is small, but clear. A blue road crosses an open white circle.
My skin prickles.
Theo continues. “I never met a doctor. You got a time and a place. Sometimes the van came to a church lot or an empty store. They treated whoever Hammer sent.”
“Saints only?”
“Not always. Homeless people. Omegas without papers. People using bad suppressants.”
His mouth tightens. “They did help people.”
Crossroads treated some people Hammer sent there, and anonymous Crossroads data appears in Dr. Sawyer’s research. That gives us a connection, but I still don’t understand it. I write the facts separately in my notebook:
Sawyer used anonymized Crossroads data.
Crossroads treated some people connected to the Saints.
Crossroads intake codes appeared in the Saints annex.
Sawyer’s protocol uses a delivery design similar to GatorX.
Ezra reads over my shoulder. “So we know the same clinic touches both sides of this.”
“Yes.” I underline the list. “We do not know why yet.” He reaches for another photographed page. “I can check the dates.”
“For what?”
“Whether the Crossroads intake dates overlap with the relief-bundles that were being distributed in town this spring. If they do, it may show the clinic was treating drug exposure before the town understood what was happening.”
“Smart,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Like it’s a surprise?”
I toss my pencil at him, and he tucks it behind his ear and goes back to work. He builds a small comparison table on his laptop while I return to Josephine’s records.
Theo places a cracker beside my hand. I eat it without being told.
The open circles on the Vines family tree have been bothering me since we left the grave.