"Look," I said turning back as I reached the door. "Don't say anything to anybody about me being here tonight, okay? Can we just let it be our secret?"
"Sure, whatever." She shrugged absently. Like, why not.
"And Tara, do yourself a favor. Get out of this place."
"But there's nowhere else I can go," she said sadness in her eyes. As I slowly closed the door, the last thing I heard was the sound of the Beethoven sonata dying away.
What a day . . . and night. As I walked down the hallway carrying the camera bag, I tried to process my new information. I'd just seen some of the most incredibly lovable babies ever. That part of it was a beautiful experience, one that pulled at my heartstrings more strongly than I'd ever imagined something like that could. The part that troubled me was, the babies were so alike, so fair, and . . . they all could have been perfect siblings for Kevin and Rachel.
No, I told myself, surely that was my imagination. Though they did look amazingly related. . . .
As I moved across the parking lot, I thought I saw a movement in the shadows just inside the entry archway, a quick change in the pattern of dark. Was it Ramala or one of the girls, I wondered, or was it just my paranoia?
Keep walking, I told myself. Lose yourself in the snow. The only way they can stop you from exposing this racket now is to kill you.
When I got back to my car, I gazed up at the imposing turrets of Quetzal Manor one last time, wishing there was enough light to film them, and collected my thoughts. Was the story about the babies being orphans or abandoned children or "whatever" really true? I didn't believe it, not for a minute.
But as Carly Grove said, Alex Goddard could "make it happen." The problem for me was, he wouldn't tell me where he got the children, and nobody I'd talked to so far seemed to want to know, not really.