Chương 6
“Of course they do.”
“And something else.”
Alvarez opened the folder.
It was a photocopy of a document Mara had never seen.
At the top:
HARBOR FAMILY SERVICES.
Below that was language about intended parentage, gestational arrangements, medical release, newborn transfer.
Mara read three lines and stopped.
“What is this?”
“St. Catherine’s produced it when we requested records related to the infants.”
Adrian moved closer.
His face became expressionless.
There were signatures at the bottom.
Mara Cole.
Adrian Cole.
Neither had signed it.
“Who are David and Leah Maddox?” Mara asked.
Alvarez watched her carefully.
“You’ve never heard those names?”
“No.”
Adrian shook his head.
“The document identifies them as intended parents of the twins.”
Mara stared at the detective.
Then she laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Her body had simply run out of correct reactions.
“No.”
“The hospital’s position is that you were acting as a gestational carrier.”
“No.”
“And that there was a dispute during delivery regarding transfer.”
“No.”
Adrian picked up the photocopy.
“This signature isn’t mine.”
“We know you say that.”
“It isn’t.”
“Mara?” Alvarez asked.
“It’s not mine.”
“Have you ever been a surrogate?”
“No.”
“Ever signed with Harbor Family Services?”
“No.”
“Ever consulted a fertility attorney?”
“No.”
“Were the twins conceived through IVF?”
“No.”
That changed the room.
Alvarez looked down at the document.
“Natural conception?”
Mara almost smiled.
“I’m not giving you details.”
“I deserve that.”
Adrian did not smile.
“If there was no fertility procedure, then this paperwork is nonsense.”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Commander, I’m not going to use certainty because you’re angry at me.”
“I’m angry at everybody.”
“I noticed.”
Mara looked again at the names.
David and Leah Maddox.
Two strangers had a document saying Lucy and Evan belonged to them.
The idea felt obscene.
And beneath the obscenity, another feeling appeared.
Fear.
“Where are they?”
“The Maddoxes?”
“Yes.”
“We’re trying to contact them.”
“Do they think the babies are theirs?”
Alvarez hesitated.
“We don’t know.”
Mara looked at the bassinets.
For the first time since escaping St. Catherine’s, she wanted the room locked.
Adrian saw it.
He quietly closed the door.
The DNA samples were collected that evening.
Mara hated the swabs.
She hated needing proof.
She hated the kind young technician for explaining chain of custody as though the words should make the whole thing less insane.
Adrian stood beside her while Evan slept through his cheek swab.
“Sorry, buddy,” he whispered.
Mara looked at him.
It was the first thing she had heard him say to his son.
Not Commander Cole.
Not the man who had kicked open an elevator.
Just a father apologizing to a baby who did not wake up.
The results would take time.
Not television time.
Real time.
Expedited testing still required documentation, verified samples, and a lab willing to put its name behind the answer.
While they waited, the outside world grew louder.
Someone leaked Mara’s name.
Then Adrian’s.
A photograph from their wedding appeared online beside a photograph of St. Catherine’s.
One headline called it THE DEAD BABIES CASE.
Mara saw it once.
After that she gave her phone to her sister, Julia, who had arrived from Phoenix with two shirts, no toothbrush, and enough anger to power a small town.
Julia read everything.
“Don’t,” Mara told her.
“I’m not.”
“You’re reading.”
“I’m monitoring.”
“That’s reading with self-importance.”
Julia looked over the phone.
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m trying to keep things normal.”
“You’re excellent at it.”
Adrian was across the room speaking to an attorney.
He had retained her that morning.
Not a military lawyer.
Not a friend.
A civil attorney named Sandra Pike who specialized in medical liability and institutional investigations.
Pike was fifty-something, unsentimental, and unimpressed by Adrian’s rank.
Mara liked her immediately.
Pike’s first advice was to stop speaking publicly.
Her second was to preserve everything.
Phones. Texts. hospital paperwork. Cab receipt if they could find it. Building footage. The jacket given to Mara by the cab driver. Elevator records. Security logs.
Her third was not advice.
It was a question.
“What do you want?”
Adrian answered first.
“Accountability.”
Pike looked at Mara.
“I asked her.”
Mara had no answer.
She wanted Lucy fed.
Evan warm.
A shower.
Her own underwear.
She wanted to rewind six hours and make Adrian leave his stupid ceremony when she texted.
She wanted Voss afraid.
She wanted not to want that.
“I want them away from my children,” she said.
“Who is ‘them’?”
Mara looked at Pike.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then that’s our first problem.”
Two days later, DNA confirmed that Mara and Adrian were the biological parents of both infants.
Mara cried when Pike told her.
Then she felt stupid for crying over something she had never doubted.
Adrian did not cry.
He sat beside the bed with his hands between his knees and nodded repeatedly.
Later Mara found him alone in the family waiting area, staring at a vending machine.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Terrible answer.”
He looked at the rows of chips.
“I spent forty-eight hours preparing myself for somebody to tell me genetics didn’t matter.”
Mara sat beside him carefully.
Her body still hurt everywhere.
“And?”
“And I meant it.”
She looked at him.
He swallowed.
“I don’t know whether that makes me better or worse.”
“It makes you tired.”
He laughed softly.
“Do you want anything?”
“From the machine?”
“Yes.”
“Salt and vinegar chips.”
“You hate those.”
“You hate those.”
He bought them.
They sat in silence while Mara ate half the bag.
The DNA result destroyed the hospital’s gestational-carrier explanation.
St. Catherine’s amended its public statement.
It now claimed it was investigating “possible fraudulent documentation introduced into the medical record by an unknown party.”
Dr. Voss was placed on administrative leave.
Leonard Shaw took a leave “for personal reasons.”
Harbor Family Services disconnected its listed phone number.
David and Leah Maddox finally contacted police through an attorney.
They were not what Mara expected.
That bothered her.
May you like
She wanted monsters.
Monsters would have been easier.
