Chương 8
My heart lurched.
“When?”
“Wednesday at three fourteen in the morning.”
Less than an hour before she appeared on airport surveillance.
“Did she answer?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Six minutes.”
“Then he took her.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Detective.”
“We don’t.”
His refusal to comfort me made me trust him again, and I hated him for it.
“Can you locate Graham?”
“His phone went dark Wednesday morning.”
Blake said, “He has property outside the city.”
Bell looked at him sharply.
“Where?”
“I don’t know exact addresses.”
“Then what do you know?”
“My father once mentioned a place near Wickenburg.”
My mother scoffed.
“Once?”
Blake turned toward her.
“Years ago.”
“What kind of place?”
“A ranch.”
Bell was already typing.
“Name?”
“I never heard one.”
“Owner?”
“Shell company, probably.”
Bell stopped.
“You know that or you’re guessing?”
“Guessing.”
“At least you’ve learned the word.”
Blake accepted the insult.
I watched him and felt exhausted by the strange transformation happening in front of me.
He was becoming useful.
That did not make him safe.
The distinction mattered.
My phone buzzed again.
Every person in the room froze.
Another message from the unknown number.
Bell took the phone before I could touch it.
The message contained only a photograph.
Priya sat on a concrete floor with her back against a plywood wall.
Her hands were tied in front of her.
A newspaper lay beside her.
The date was that morning.
My breath caught.
She was alive.
Her face was bruised, but her eyes were open.
Bell enlarged the image.
“Don’t touch anything.”
Another message arrived.
BRING RICHARD STANFORD TO THE OLD COPPER ROAD PROPERTY TOMORROW AT NOON.
Blake whispered, “What?”
Bell kept reading.
NO POLICE.
NO SECURITY.
NO TRICKS.
PRIYA WALKS OUT WHEN RICHARD WALKS IN.
My mother said, “Absolutely not.”
Blake looked at Bell.
“Old Copper Road.”
“You know it?”
“My father does.”
Another message appeared.
NATALIE MUST COME TOO.
Owen said, “No.”
The force in his voice surprised everyone.
“She is post-operative, anemic, and not medically stable for whatever this is.”
Bell was staring at the phone.
A final message appeared.
ASK HER WHY HER ULTRASOUND WAS WORTH KILLING FOR.
The room went silent.
I felt my hand move toward my abdomen before I could stop it.
Not the babies.
Not merely the babies.
The ultrasound.
Something about the pregnancy itself.
Bell looked at me.
“Did Dr. Shah ever tell you anything unusual about the twins?”
“No.”
“Anything about genetic testing?”
“I hadn’t done it yet.”
“Paternity?”
I turned toward Blake.
His face changed.
My mother said, “Don’t.”
Bell did not apologize.
“I have to ask.”
“They were Blake’s.”
Blake stared at me.
“I never doubted that.”
I laughed bitterly.
“That may be the nicest thing you’ve said all week.”
Nobody smiled.
Owen stepped closer.
“What tests had been performed?”
“Routine labs.”
“Blood type?”
“Yes.”
He went still.
My attention sharpened.
“What?”
Owen looked at Blake.
“What’s your blood type?”
Blake frowned.
“O positive.”
Owen looked at me.
“And yours?”
“A positive.”
He turned toward the tablet.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking something.”
He scrolled through my chart, then stopped.
His face lost color.
Bell moved beside him.
“What?”
Owen looked at me.
“The fetal blood typing isn’t something routinely established this early.”
“So?”
“So there is a note in the external laboratory upload attached to your prenatal record.”
“I thought this hospital didn’t have access.”
“It didn’t until police obtained the clinic export tonight.”
Bell said, “Read the note.”
Owen hesitated.
Then he looked directly at Blake.
“The preliminary genetic screening flagged something inconsistent with the listed paternal family history.”
Blake’s voice dropped.
“What kind of inconsistency?”
Owen swallowed.
“The twins carried a rare inherited marker associated with the Stanford family.”
My mother frowned.
“That sounds consistent.”
Owen shook his head.
“Not Blake’s branch.”
No one moved.
Blake stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
Owen turned the tablet so we could see the note.
“It means the marker documented in the twins matches a line associated with Richard Stanford.”
Blake stared at the tablet as if the words might rearrange themselves if he waited long enough.
“My father has a different bloodline marker than I do?”
Owen nodded slowly.
“According to the laboratory note, yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It can.”
Bell looked between them.
“Explain it without turning this into medical school.”
Owen set the tablet down.
“Richard Stanford is Blake’s father, but certain inherited markers can come from different ancestral lines and appear in one branch of a family but not another.”
Blake’s face hardened.
“So the twins had something associated with him.”
“Yes.”
“And not with me.”
“Not with the profile listed for you.”
My mother looked from Owen to Blake.
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
Owen hesitated.
“I’m not suggesting anything yet.”
Bell said, “Good.”
He pointed at the tablet.
“Because if we leap from genetic marker to paternity, we contaminate the whole investigation with speculation.”
Blake suddenly looked at me.
The expression on his face hurt more than I expected.
Not suspicion.
Fear.
“Natalie.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not accusing you.”
“You were about to ask.”
“No.”
“You were.”
His jaw tightened.
“I was about to ask whether the lab could be wrong.”
Owen answered before I could.
“Yes.”
Blake turned toward him.
“Yes?”
“Preliminary screening can be incomplete, mislabeled, contaminated, or misinterpreted.”
Bell nodded.
“So we treat it as a clue, not a conclusion.”
My mother gripped the cardigan around herself.
“Then why would anyone kill over it?”
Nobody answered.
I stared at the image of Priya on the phone.
Her bruised cheek.
Her tied hands.
The newspaper beside her.
A woman had been kidnapped because she knew something connected to my pregnancy.
The obvious explanation was the one everyone in the room was refusing to say.
I said it.
“Richard thought the twins were his.”
My mother turned sharply.
Blake went white.
Bell raised a hand.
“We do not know that.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“But somebody did.”
May you like
Owen’s mouth tightened.
“That would explain the panic around the prenatal records.”
