Chương 6
“I don’t know.”
“What did Grace say?”
Daniel’s eyes moved toward the window.
“She asked me whether you had calmed down.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“About what?”
“She didn’t say.”
He knew.
The night before the delivery, Grace had packed a suitcase. Marcus found it in the guest room and asked where she planned to go. She told him her sister’s apartment. He said she was not taking his child into a building he could not secure.
Grace said, “Our child is not a shipment.”
He had been awake for two days because a driver had vanished with money and names. He had broken a drinking glass against the kitchen sink. Not thrown it at her. Not touched her. For years, that distinction had protected him from the full memory.
He had told her, “Leave if you want. You don’t take my child.”
She had stood barefoot among pieces of glass.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that.”
“I just did.”
The next morning, labor began.
Marcus rubbed the edge of the empty drawer until the wood warmed beneath his thumb.
“Vincent recorded that argument.”
Daniel’s expression sharpened. “How?”
“The house system.”
“Audio wasn’t supposed to run inside private rooms.”
“Vincent controlled installation.”
Daniel looked at the locked case.
Marcus said, “Find Josephine Bell.”
It took four days.
Claire found three nurses with similar names, two dead ends, and one retired neonatal nurse living outside Rockford under her married surname. Josephine Bell Archer refused to speak on the phone. She refused to meet at Marcus’s house. She refused a car sent by Daniel and threatened to call police when a guard remained parked across from her property.
Claire went alone.
She returned after dark carrying a sealed envelope and the smell of cigarette smoke.
Marcus waited in the library. Emma and Lily were upstairs with Rosa, attempting to repair the rabbit. Emma had rejected every new stuffed animal delivered to the house, including an expensive handmade rabbit that Lily described as “too clean to know anything.”
“What did she say?” Marcus asked.
Claire placed the envelope on the desk.
“She said she was twenty-six, had a six-month-old son, and owed more in medical debt than she earned in a year. Vincent offered her money to alter the maternity log after the attack. When she refused, someone photographed her son at day care.”
Marcus opened the envelope.
Inside was a photocopy of a handwritten delivery record. Grace Mercer. Twin female infants. Times of birth three minutes apart. Two sets of footprints.
“She kept this?”
“She made a copy before changing the original. She thought it would protect her.”
“Why didn’t she come forward?”
“Because protection is not the same as courage.”
Claire sat across from him. “She took the money. She changed the chart. She told investigators one infant had died before transport. She has spent seven years telling herself the children were safer separated.”
“Will she testify?”
“No.”
Marcus looked up.
“She gave us this because she learned Grace was dead,” Claire said. “But she has a husband, grandchildren, a nursing pension, and a life that could collapse. Fear did not turn her noble just because time passed.”
“I can protect her.”
“That sentence is the reason she doesn’t trust you.”
He leaned back.
Claire rubbed her eyes. She had been awake almost as long as he had.
“The copy helps,” she said. “It does not prove Vincent ordered anything. We need financial records, communications, witnesses, the false death documents, the ambulance route, and some evidence Grace was threatened.”
“The letter.”
“Powerful, but challengeable. Vincent’s lawyers will say Grace was ill, frightened, perhaps manipulated by someone else. They will attack the time gap. They will attack Emma. They will attack you.”
Marcus looked toward the ceiling.
A faint thump came from upstairs, followed by Lily saying, “That was already broken.”
Claire followed his gaze. “The paternity finding is leaking tomorrow.”
“How do you know?”
“A network producer called for comment.”
“Who has the report?”
“The court, the laboratory, child services, my office, your office.”
“My office has six people.”
“Then you have six starting points.”
Marcus picked up the photocopied log.
Claire said, “There is another problem.”
“Of course there is.”
“Child services received an anonymous allegation that armed meetings take place in this house while Lily is present.”
Marcus said nothing.
“Is it true?”
“Not anymore.”
“That was not my question.”
He set down the paper.
Claire’s stare remained steady.
“Men have met here,” he said.
“Armed?”
“Yes.”
“While Lily was home?”
“Yes.”
Claire stood and walked to the window. For several seconds she watched traffic beyond the wall.
“You think removing guns from bedrooms makes this a safe house,” she said. “It doesn’t. Safety is not furniture arrangement.”
“My daughters are targets.”
“They are targets because of the life around you.”
He almost dismissed her.
Instead he heard Emma beneath the kitchen table: Deserving is how men start.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“There will be another review. Emma’s placement may be suspended. Lily’s custody could be examined.”
“No.”
“This is not a negotiation with me.”
“Who made the allegation?”
“I don’t know.”
“Vincent.”
“Probably. Proving that does not make the allegation false.”
That night, Emma woke screaming for the first time.
Not loudly. The sound came strangled, as if she had learned to keep terror from passing through thin apartment walls.
Marcus reached the hallway before Rosa. Lily had already climbed into Emma’s bed.
Emma was striking at something she could not see. Lily held her wrists and repeated, “It’s me. It’s me. It’s me.”
Marcus stopped in the doorway.
Emma’s eyes opened.
For one confused second she looked at Lily as if staring into a mirror that had begun moving independently.
Then she pulled away and pressed herself against the headboard.
“He found us.”
“No,” Marcus said.
Her eyes snapped toward him.
“No one is here.”
“You don’t know.”
Daniel’s voice came through Marcus’s earpiece. “House secure.”
May you like
Emma saw him listening.
“That’s what she did,” she whispered.
