Chapter 6 - THE FILE THEY STOLE
They reached Dr. Shaw before sunrise.
She was eighty-one and dying of pancreatic cancer.
The hospice room smelled of antiseptic and lavender hand cream.
Evelyn Shaw looked smaller than Daniel remembered.
When she saw Anna, she began to cry.
“I knew it.”
Anna stopped at the foot of the bed.
“Knew what?”
“That you survived.”
Daniel’s anger rose.
Shaw saw it.
“I did not know for certain.”
“Adrian told me there had been an identification error.”
“When?”
“Three years after the funeral.”
Daniel stared.
“And you never told me?”
“He threatened my son.”
There it was again.
Fear.
One threat.
Years of silence.
Anna asked, “The medical file.”
Shaw closed her eyes.
“Adrian took it.”
“What was inside?”
“I never opened it.”
“You kept something for seven years without opening it?”
“It was sealed.”
“Why?”
“Because the doctor who gave it to me begged me.”
“What doctor?”
“Nathan Bell.”
Anna froze.
The man from the clinic.
Daniel stepped closer.
“When?”
“Two days before the Hawthorne crash.”
Anna’s face changed.
“Before?”
Shaw nodded.
“Bell said the patient did not yet know she was pregnant.”
Daniel felt sick.
“Why would Bell know?”
Shaw stared at Anna.
“You had bloodwork done.”
Anna frowned.
“I didn’t.”
“Not voluntarily.”
The implication hung there.
Someone tested her.
Someone knew.
Someone planned ahead.
Shaw continued.
“Bell said if anything happened to Anna, Daniel needed the file.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“I tried after the funeral.”
“Adrian told me you were mentally unstable.”
“That seeing prenatal results would destroy you.”
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“And you believed him?”
“Yes.”
Shaw began crying harder.
“I am sorry.”
Anna sat beside the bed.
“Did Bell say anything else?”
Shaw nodded weakly.
“One sentence.”
“What?”
“He said the baby changed everything.”
Daniel looked at Anna.
“For who?”
Shaw shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
After they left, Marcus drove them to his office.
He opened a private safe.
Inside were years of documents he had collected on Voss.
Daniel stared.
“You investigated him all this time?”
Marcus nodded.
“Badly.”
“But yes.”
Anna asked, “Why didn’t you go to federal authorities?”
“Because three years ago I tried.”
“What happened?”
“The agent I met called Voss before I got home.”
Daniel looked at him.
“You were compromised from inside.”
“Exactly.”
That was why Marcus became secretive.
Paranoid.
Hostile.
Why every attempt looked guilty from outside.
He had been fighting something he did not know how to name.
Anna flipped through the files.
“Where is Voss now?”
Marcus leaned against the desk.
“I think he went to retrieve the prenatal file.”
Daniel asked, “Why now?”
Marcus looked at Lily’s photograph on his phone.
“Because you found Anna.”
“If the secret mattered only while you thought she was dead, maybe now it becomes dangerous.”
Daniel’s chest tightened.
“Dangerous to whom?”
Nobody knew.
Anna found a bank record.
A payment to Nathan Bell.
Dated the day after the crash.
Sender:
A.V.
Recipient:
BELL MEDICAL CONSULTING.
Memo:
CONTINUED CARE.
Anna looked at Daniel.
“Voss paid him.”
Marcus said, “That doesn’t prove he ordered what happened.”
“It proves Bell worked for him.”
Daniel turned.
“Where is Bell now?”
Anna answered.
“Dead.”
Marcus frowned.
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
“Boating accident.”
Marcus laughed once.
“Body?”
Anna went quiet.
“No.”
Marcus looked at Daniel.
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
Daniel hated the answer.
“Yes.”
Nathan Bell might still be alive.
And unlike Victor or Voss, Bell knew something from before Anna’s disappearance.
Something involving Lily.
Moreno joined them.
She had another piece.
Samuel Price’s accident report.
The steering column showed evidence of tampering.
Never fully investigated.
“Why?”
Daniel asked.
Moreno’s jaw tightened.
“Because Price was already under internal review.”
“For what?”
“Unauthorized access to Mercer Freight case files.”
Anna whispered, “He was investigating.”
“Yes.”
Moreno continued.
“His personal effects disappeared from evidence storage six months after his death.”
“Who signed them out?”
Moreno slid over a form.
Adrian Voss.
Daniel stared.
As company counsel, Voss claimed the items were corporate evidence.
Moreno said, “That should never have happened.”
Marcus rubbed his face.
“Everything points back to Adrian.”
Anna looked unconvinced.
“Too neatly.”
Daniel turned.
“What do you mean?”
“Victor is violent.”
“Adrian manipulates records.”
“Marcus hid things.”
“Price died.”
“Jennifer died.”
“I disappeared.”
“But why?”
She pointed to the prenatal issue.
“The money was enough reason to silence me.”
“So why test me?”
“Why care about the baby?”
Daniel understood.
“There’s a missing motive.”
“Yes.”
The door opened.
An assistant entered nervously.
“Mr. Mercer?”
Marcus looked up.
“What?”
“There’s someone downstairs asking for Daniel.”
“Who?”
“She won’t give her name.”
Daniel frowned.
“Description?”
“Woman.”
“Late sixties.”
“She said to tell him…”
The assistant hesitated.
“What?”
“She said, ‘I knew Anna before she became Anna.’”
Anna’s face changed.
Daniel looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
Anna whispered:
“My mother.”
Daniel stared.
“Your mother died when you were twelve.”
Anna shook her head.
“That’s what I was told.”
And suddenly the one rule Daniel thought they had established shattered.
Another dead person.
Anna saw his expression.
“No.”
“She is dead.”
“I saw her body.”
Daniel exhaled.
“Then who is downstairs?”
Anna already knew.
“My mother’s sister.”
“Carol.”
Daniel remembered the name vaguely.
Anna had not seen her aunt since she was a teenager.
Carol Bennett entered ten minutes later.
Silver hair.
Straight posture.
Sharp brown eyes.
She looked at Anna and cried immediately.
Then slapped Daniel.
Hard.
Marcus stared.
Daniel held his cheek.
“Okay.”
Carol pointed at him.
“I have wanted to do that for seven years.”
Anna stood.
“Aunt Carol.”
Carol hugged her.
Long.
Desperate.
When she pulled away, she looked at Lily’s photograph.
“She looks like you.”
Anna nodded.
“She also looks like Daniel.”
Carol’s face tightened.
“That’s the problem.”
Daniel stared.
“What problem?”
Carol looked at Anna.
“Your mother made me promise never to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
Carol sat.
“Your mother worked for Mercer Industries.”
Anna frowned.
“No.”
“She was a nurse.”
“She became a nurse later.”
“Before that, she worked in medical research.”
“For Daniel’s father.”
Daniel’s blood turned cold.
“Robert Mercer?”
Carol nodded.
Anna stared.
“My mother knew Daniel’s family?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Carol looked at Daniel.
“Because your father funded the fertility study that created you.”
Nobody spoke.
Daniel frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Carol took out an old folder.
“Your mother, Anna’s mother, and Evelyn Mercer were part of a private reproductive genetics program in the early 1990s.”
Anna whispered, “No.”
Carol slid over records.
Daniel read.
The language was technical.
Embryo screening.
Inherited disease markers.
Experimental testing.
He looked at Carol.
“What does this have to do with Anna?”
Carol pointed at one line.
PATIENT GROUP B-17.
ANNA BENNETT.
Daniel stared.
Anna’s mother had enrolled while pregnant with Anna.
Carol continued.
“Robert Mercer ended the project after a scandal.”
“But some records survived.”
“Adrian Voss became the attorney who buried them.”
Daniel looked at Anna.
“The baby changed everything.”
Anna’s face went pale.
Carol nodded.
“Because Lily may have inherited something the study was tracking.”
Daniel’s anger returned.
“What?”
Carol shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“But Adrian does.”
Anna whispered:
“So this wasn’t just about company theft.”
Carol looked at her.
“No.”
“You found money.”
“But what Adrian feared was that you would find the old research underneath it.”
Daniel stared at the files.
For seven years they had been looking at the wrong beginning.
The story had not started with Anna’s disappearance.
May you like
It had started before Anna was born.
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