Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Wouldn’t Leave
Emergency lighting turned my office red.
Prescott reacted first.
“Lockdown.”
His hand went to his earpiece.
“Control, report.”
Static.
Nothing else.
He tried again.
No answer.
That had never happened.
My estate didn’t lose power.
Not in storms.
Not during grid failures.
Not even during the historic blackout three winters earlier.
I had three independent generators, a battery system, and a private electrical room designed by engineers who charged more for an hour than most people earned in a month.
Someone had deliberately shut something down.
“My children,” I said.
Prescott was already moving.
“East medical wing has independent backup.”
“I don’t care. We go now.”
Elena followed.
One of the guards blocked her.
“She stays.”
“No,” Elena said immediately.
I turned.
Her face had drained of color.
“If the power was cut because of me, you need to get to the twins.”
That stopped me.
“What do you know?”
“Not enough.”
“Then start talking.”
“Later.”
I stepped closer until she had nowhere to look except at me.
“You do not tell me ‘later’ when my children are involved.”
She whispered, “Then move while I talk.”
So we moved.
Prescott led us down the dark corridor with two guards ahead.
Red emergency strips glowed near the floor.
The mansion I had built to feel impenetrable suddenly felt enormous and exposed.
“Elena,” I said. “Who killed my wife?”
“I never learned his name.”
“Then why did you say someone killed her?”
“Because Genevieve told me someone was trying to.”
My footsteps stopped.
Prescott turned.
Elena did too.
“What?”
“She knew.”
“When?”
“Months before the crash.”
I stared at her.
Genevieve had never told me.
Not once.
She had seemed distracted during those months.
I remembered phone calls she ended when I entered rooms.
A trip to Milwaukee she claimed was for a charity board.
Arguments about nothing.
Sleepless nights.
I had assumed grief and distance after years of marriage.
Now those memories rearranged themselves into something ugly.
“Why would she tell you instead of me?”
Elena looked almost ashamed.
“Because she thought telling you would get you killed.”
We continued.
That answer stayed beside me like a ghost.
At the medical wing, the backup power was working.
Soft blue-white light filled the corridor.
Dr. Yates stood outside the twins’ room with two nurses.
“They’re fine.”
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Any interruption?”
“Less than two seconds.”
I walked inside.
Jonah slept.
Blythe did too.
Machines continued their quiet rhythms.
For the first time since the lights went out, my hands stopped trembling.
Then Franklin noticed Elena.
His expression changed.
Very slightly.
But I saw it.
“You know her?” I asked.
“No.”
Too fast.
Franklin had answered too fast.
Elena looked at him.
Her face went still.
“You’re Dr. Franklin Yates.”
“Yes.”
“Genevieve trusted you.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Who are you?”
“Elena Ward.”
Nothing.
Then something.
Recognition.
Not of her face.
Of the name.
He looked at me.
“Lawson, we need to speak privately.”
“No. We speak here.”
Elena stepped closer to the glass.
Her eyes landed on Jonah.
Then Blythe.
She pressed her fingers against her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“They look like her.”
I felt anger rise.
“You’ve seen pictures.”
“No.”
“Then how—”
“I knew Genevieve before she married you.”
That was the second impossible revelation in less than an hour.
Franklin turned toward her.
“When?”
Elena didn’t answer immediately.
“Years ago.”
“How?”
“She volunteered at St. Anne’s.”
I remembered the name vaguely.
A clinic on Chicago’s South Side.
Genevieve had spent years volunteering before we met.
Elena continued.
“I was seventeen. My mother was sick. We had no insurance. Genevieve helped us.”
“You were a patient?”
“My mother was.”
“And seven years later she gave you a necklace?”
“She found me again.”
“Why?”
Elena looked at the twins.
“Because she discovered what had been done.”
Franklin’s face lost color.
“What exactly did she discover?”
Elena took the old report from my hand.
She unfolded it and held it toward him.
The moment Franklin saw the header, he stopped breathing.
“Where did you get this?”
“Genevieve.”
He looked at the date.
Then the twins’ names.
“This can’t exist.”
“That’s what Lawson said.”
Franklin carried the report toward the brighter nurses’ station.
He read it line by line.
Finally, he sat down.
I had never seen him sit because of shock.
“What?” I demanded.
“These markers…”
“What about them?”
“They’re not leukemia markers.”
“Then what are they?”
“Predisposition markers.”
“To what?”
He looked at the children.
“Bone marrow failure. Immune instability. Certain blood cancers.”
My stomach turned.
“Predisposition doesn’t mean certainty.”
“No.”
“Then why are their names on a report before they were born?”
“That part I cannot explain.”
Elena could.
“Because the names were added later.”
Everyone looked at her.
“Genevieve told me the original file had codes, not names. She wrote the twins’ names onto the copy when she realized the profile matched them.”
Franklin examined the document again.
“That would make sense.”
“What profile?” I asked.
Elena inhaled slowly.
“Your children were conceived through IVF.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
After three miscarriages, Genevieve and I had gone through treatment at a private fertility center outside Chicago.
I had paid for the best.
Naturally.
Elena continued.
“Genevieve discovered the clinic wasn’t only screening embryos.”
Franklin’s eyes hardened.
“What were they doing?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“What did Genevieve tell you?”
“That someone connected to the clinic had been tracking children born through certain programs.”
I felt cold spread through my chest.
“Tracking?”
“For years.”
“Why?”
“She never told me.”
“Or you’re lying.”
Elena looked at me.
“If I were lying, I wouldn’t have waited outside your gate in the rain.”
“You could want money.”
“I have forty-eight dollars in my bank account.”
“You could want attention.”
“I spent two years making sure no one knew I existed.”
“Then why come now?”
She looked through the glass.
“Because I heard Jonah and Blythe were sick.”
“How?”
Her hesitation told me there was another secret.
“Someone contacted me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they say?”
She reached into her pocket and removed an old prepaid phone.
Prescott took it, checked it, then handed it to me.
One message.
Sent the previous night.
THE MERCER TWINS HAVE DAYS, NOT MONTHS.
BENEATH it was another line.
KEEP YOUR PROMISE TO GENEVIEVE.
No number.
No sender identification.
I looked at Prescott.
“Trace it.”
“I’ll try.”
Elena shook her head.
“You won’t.”
Prescott glanced at her.
“Why?”
“Because Genevieve got messages the same way.”
I turned to Franklin.
“You knew nothing about this?”
“No.”
“Did Genevieve ever speak to you about the fertility clinic?”
He hesitated.
That was enough.
“What?”
“Six months before she died, she asked me for copies of the twins’ earliest blood work.”
“Why?”
“She claimed she was comparing allergies.”
“And you believed her?”
“At the time.”
“Did she ask anything else?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Franklin looked at the floor.
“She asked me whether a child’s genetics could be manipulated before implantation.”
Elena closed her eyes.
My anger became something colder.
“What did you tell her?”
“That modern reproductive medicine allows selection and screening for certain genetic conditions. Editing embryos is another matter entirely and tightly restricted. I asked why she wanted to know.”
“What did she say?”
Franklin looked directly at me.
“She said she thought someone had experimented on her children.”
A long silence followed.
I looked through the glass again.
My children.
My six-year-old children.
My sick children.
Everything I had believed about their illness was suddenly uncertain.
I walked toward the window at the end of the hall.
Chicago stretched beyond the estate walls.
Lights.
Cars.
Millions of people living ordinary lives.
Somewhere out there might be the person who had known my wife was afraid.
Possibly the person who had killed her.
And possibly the person who knew exactly why my twins were dying.
Prescott approached.
“Power failure originated inside the estate.”
I turned.
“Where?”
“West utility room.”
“Camera?”
“Disabled three minutes before the shutdown.”
“Who has access?”
“Seven people.”
“Names.”
He gave them.
Engineers.
Security.
Maintenance.
Himself.
Then a name I didn’t expect.
Dr. Franklin Yates.
Franklin heard it.
“My access is for medical emergencies.”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
Then a nurse called from inside the room.
“Doctor!”
We ran in.
Jonah was awake.
Not just awake.
Terrified.
His hand was pointing toward the window.
“There was a man.”
Every adult froze.
“What man?” I asked.
“Outside.”
The medical wing was on the second floor.
No balcony.
No external staircase.
“What did he look like?”
Jonah swallowed.
“He had a black coat.”
“When?”
“Before the lights came back.”
Prescott crossed to the window.
He looked down.
Nothing.
Then he saw something on the outside ledge.
A white envelope.
Impossible to reach from inside without opening the secured window.
Prescott unlocked it.
He retrieved the envelope.
My name was written across the front.
LAWSON.
Inside was one photograph.
Genevieve.
Alive.
Standing beside Elena.
The date printed in the corner was six days after the day my wife supposedly died.
On the back, someone had written five words.
SHE SURVIVED THE FIRST CRASH.
May you like
And beneath them:
ASK WHO FINISHED THE JOB.
