Chapter 3 - My Dead Wife’s Necklace
I had buried my wife.
I had stood beside her coffin while rain soaked through a black wool coat and Jonah screamed because he did not understand why his mother would not come home.
Blythe had been too young to understand death.
She kept asking whether Mommy was sleeping.
For two years I had carried one fact like stone:
Genevieve died on impact.
Now I held a photograph proving that fact was a lie.
“Verify it,” I told Prescott.
“We need the original file.”
“Verify everything.”
He nodded and disappeared.
Elena stared at the photograph.
Her hands trembled.
“You’ve seen this before?” I asked.
“No.”
“You’re standing beside her.”
“I know.”
“Where?”
She looked more closely.
“That room…”
“What room?”
“A motel.”
“Which motel?”
“Somewhere near Joliet. I don’t remember the name.”
“When?”
“After she contacted me.”
“After the crash?”
Elena looked at me.
“Yes.”
Rage moved through me so quickly I nearly welcomed it.
Anger was easier than grief.
“You knew she survived.”
“Yes.”
“And for two years you said nothing.”
“I thought she died later.”
“You thought?”
“Lawson—”
“Do not use my name like you know me.”
She flinched.
Good.
I wanted someone else to hurt.
Then I saw Blythe watching from her bed.
The anger disappeared from my face immediately.
I walked into the medical suite.
“Everything okay, Daddy?”
“Yes.”
Children know when adults lie.
She didn’t challenge me.
She simply nodded and closed her eyes.
I waited until both twins were asleep again before returning to Elena.
“Start from the beginning.”
She sat.
For the next forty minutes, she told me about the wife I apparently had not known as well as I believed.
Seven years earlier, Elena had worked nights cleaning offices while caring for her mother.
One afternoon, she returned to St. Anne’s clinic to retrieve old medical records.
Genevieve was there volunteering.
They recognized each other.
Genevieve had helped Elena’s mother years earlier.
They spoke.
Then lost contact again.
Until two years ago.
“Genevieve called me from a number I didn’t recognize,” Elena said.
“How did she have your number?”
“She said she’d found me through the clinic.”
“What did she want?”
“She asked whether I remembered a research program St. Anne’s had participated in.”
“What program?”
“Genetic screening.”
My stomach tightened.
Elena continued.
“My mother had given blood for research when she was sick. I was tested too because doctors thought her condition might run in families.”
“What condition?”
“A rare immune disorder.”
“Did you have it?”
“No.”
“Then why did Genevieve care?”
“She said the company that funded those tests later invested in the fertility clinic you and she used.”
“Name?”
“Novagen Biomedical.”
I knew it.
Everyone in Chicago finance did.
Novagen had grown from a small research company into a global medical conglomerate.
Diagnostics.
Cancer treatment.
Reproductive medicine.
Gene therapy.
They were worth almost forty billion dollars.
And I owned seven percent.
The realization struck me physically.
“I invested in them.”
Elena nodded.
“So did a lot of people.”
“When did Genevieve learn the connection?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened after she contacted you?”
“We met twice.”
“And then?”
“The crash.”
“Except she survived.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me how.”
Elena looked at the photograph.
“Genevieve called me at 2:13 in the morning.”
I remembered that night.
I had been in New York.
My phone had died during a dinner.
By the time my team reached me the next morning, she was supposedly dead.
“She was crying,” Elena said. “She said her car had been hit.”
“Hit?”
“She said another vehicle forced her off the highway.”
My jaw tightened.
“That was never in the police report.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“She told me later.”
“Where was she?”
“I don’t know. She said someone had pulled her from the car before emergency services arrived.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t know.”
“And police?”
“She said she couldn’t trust them.”
That sounded absurd.
Yet the photograph in my hand existed.
“What did she ask you to do?”
“Meet her at the motel.”
“Why you?”
“Because no one knew we knew each other.”
I stared at her.
That made sense.
Genevieve’s friends, family, lawyers, assistants—any of them might have been watched.
Elena Ward was invisible to my world.
“What happened at the motel?”
“She looked terrible. Bruised. Cut on her forehead. She gave me the necklace and the report.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That people connected to Novagen had discovered she was investigating.”
“Investigating what?”
“Children.”
“What children?”
“Children born from a fertility project.”
My skin prickled.
“She said Jonah and Blythe weren’t the only ones.”
“How many?”
“She didn’t know.”
“What did Novagen do to them?”
“She said she believed embryos had been intentionally selected for a rare genetic profile.”
“Why?”
“Research.”
The word sat between us.
I laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
“Research?”
“She thought Novagen wanted to study how certain therapies worked on people with particular genetic traits.”
“So they deliberately created sick children?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said—”
“She didn’t know whether they created the condition or knowingly selected embryos carrying it.”
The distinction did not matter to me.
My children were dying.
Someone might have known that possibility before they were born.
“What happened after the motel?”
“Genevieve left.”
“Where?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“And you never saw her again?”
“No.”
“When did you hear she died?”
“Three weeks later.”
Not on the highway.
Three weeks later.
My mind struggled to process it.
“How?”
“She sent one message.”
Elena’s eyes filled again.
“What did it say?”
“She said, ‘If I disappear, they found me.’”
“That’s all?”
“No.”
Elena looked at me.
“She also said, ‘Don’t trust the first story Lawson hears.’”
I turned away.
All those years.
All my security.
All my power.
My wife had been terrified and alone.
And somehow she had believed hiding from me would keep me safe.
My phone rang.
Prescott.
I answered immediately.
“Well?”
“The photograph is real.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Date?”
“Metadata was stripped, but the film stock matches the period. We found the motel.”
“And?”
“Security archive.”
My heart stopped.
“You found video?”
“Part of it.”
“Genevieve?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Six days after the crash.”
Alive.
My knees almost failed me.
“What else?”
Prescott was silent.
“Say it.”
“She wasn’t alone when she left.”
“Who was with her?”
“We’re enhancing the footage.”
“Who?”
His answer came slowly.
“Franklin Yates.”
I turned toward the doctor.
He stood fifteen feet away.
Watching me.
He saw my expression.
And he knew.
“Lawson,” he said.
I lowered the phone.
“You were with her.”
His face changed.
Elena stood.
“What?”
Franklin did not deny it.
That was worse.
“You saw my wife alive after her funeral arrangements had already begun.”
“Yes.”
“You let me bury an empty coffin?”
“Lawson—”
“You watched my children mourn their mother.”
“I was trying to protect them.”
“From whom?”
Franklin’s eyes moved toward the twins.
Then toward Elena.
Finally back to me.
“From you.”
I stepped toward him.
Every guard in the hall stiffened.
“What did you say?”
“Not because you would hurt them.”
“Then explain quickly.”
“Because Genevieve believed the danger existed inside your business.”
“My business has thousands of employees.”
“She didn’t mean an employee.”
“Then who?”
“She believed whoever was responsible had access to Mercer family medical records, financial records, security routines, and your private schedule.”
“That narrows nothing.”
Franklin shook his head.
“It narrowed it for her.”
“To who?”
Before he could answer, Prescott’s voice exploded through my phone.
“Lawson, move everyone out of the medical wing. Now.”
“Why?”
“We found something in the electrical system.”
“What?”
“A secondary device attached to the backup supply.”
“What kind of device?”
His next words turned the room cold.
“A remote shutdown unit.”
I looked through the glass at my sleeping children.
Someone hadn’t merely cut power to my house.
They had installed a way to cut power specifically to the systems keeping Jonah and Blythe alive.
May you like
And according to Prescott, the device had been placed there months before Elena ever arrived.
Someone had been preparing for this night long before I knew there was a war.
