Chapter 5 - TWO WOMEN, ONE FACE
“No.”
Lily backed away from the phone.
“No, no, no.”
Victor kept staring at the image.
The resemblance was impossible to ignore.
Same height.
Same hair.
Same face.
“It isn’t me.”
Victor looked at her.
“I know what it looks like,” Lily said. “But that isn’t me.”
Daniel enlarged the frame.
The image was grainy.
But the similarity remained.
Detective Ruiz returned thirty minutes later.
He examined Lily closely.
“Do you have a sister?”
“No.”
“A cousin who looks like you?”
“No.”
“Twin?”
Lily gave him a look.
“I think I’d know.”
Ruiz didn’t smile.
“Were you adopted?”
Lily went quiet.
Victor noticed.
Ruiz noticed too.
“Yes,” Lily finally said.
Victor frowned.
“You never mentioned that.”
“Why would I?”
“Do you know your biological family?”
“No. My parents adopted me when I was three months old.”
Ruiz leaned forward.
“Where were you born?”
“St. Anne’s Medical Center in Baltimore.”
Ruiz wrote it down.
“Date?”
“May eighteenth, 1998.”
Victor looked again at the security image.
Ruiz asked, “Any unusual contact over the last year? Someone who seemed to know you?”
Lily shook her head.
Then stopped.
“What?”
“There was a woman.”
Victor’s pulse quickened.
“When?”
“Last summer. At a coffee shop.”
“What happened?”
“She just stared at me.”
Ruiz asked, “Did she speak to you?”
“She said I looked exactly like someone she used to know.”
“What name?”
Lily’s face changed as memory returned.
“She said ‘Laura.’”
Ruiz looked at Victor.
Victor felt a cold weight settle in his stomach.
Serena Vale’s birth name, according to the documents he had seen when they applied for a marriage license, was Serena Laura Vale.
At least, that was what he thought.
Ruiz stood.
“I’m going to pull birth records.”
Victor grabbed his jacket.
“I’m coming.”
“You’re staying with your son.”
“My son is asleep. Daniel is here.”
Ruiz stared at him.
“This is not a board meeting, Mr. Blackwood.”
Victor stared back.
“And someone attacked my child, planted evidence in my employee’s apartment, infiltrated my company, and possibly abducted my former nanny.”
Ruiz sighed.
“Fine. Don’t touch anything.”
Three hours later, they had an answer.
There was no birth certificate for a Lily Carter born at St. Anne’s on May 18, 1998.
There were, however, two female infants born that day under sealed adoption records.
Twin girls.
Mother: Evelyn Marrow.
Father: unknown.
One girl had been adopted.
The other had disappeared from hospital records forty-eight hours after birth.
Victor felt his throat tighten.
Ruiz looked at Lily.
“Your adoptive records were amended.”
Lily stared at the page.
“So I had a twin.”
Ruiz nodded.
“Most likely.”
“What happened to her?”
“We don’t know.”
Lily’s voice cracked.
“And you think she’s the woman in that video?”
“We need DNA.”
Victor suddenly remembered the unknown fingerprints in the hidden room.
“If her twin was in my house…”
Ruiz nodded.
“The prints could be hers.”
Lily sat down heavily.
Her entire identity had shifted in less than ten minutes.
Victor crouched beside her.
“Hey.”
She looked at him.
“What if she hurt Rebecca?”
“We don’t know that.”
“What if she works with Serena?”
“We don’t know that either.”
Lily laughed once through tears.
“We don’t know anything.”
Victor had no answer.
His phone rang.
Daniel.
“Sir, Serena’s gone.”
Victor shot to his feet.
“What?”
“She escaped through the old service tunnel.”
Victor’s face hardened.
“What service tunnel?”
“There’s a passage from the wine cellar to the greenhouse. It was on the original estate plans.”
“Why wasn’t it secured?”
“It was bricked over twenty years ago.”
“Apparently not.”
Ruiz was already grabbing his coat.
Daniel continued.
“She left something behind.”
“What?”
“A phone.”
Victor frowned.
“Why would she leave her phone?”
“It isn’t her normal phone.”
Daniel paused.
“It has one contact saved.”
“Who?”
Daniel said, “Lily Carter.”
Lily looked up.
Victor put the call on speaker.
Daniel continued.
“The number attached to the contact is the same number Rebecca used to send Lily those warnings.”
Lily went still.
Ruiz swore under his breath.
Victor asked, “So Serena was pretending to be Rebecca?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Daniel’s voice became grim.
“Because we just got the lab result from the blood found in the trunk of the SUV from the security footage.”
Victor’s heart hammered.
“Whose blood?”
“Rebecca Hall’s.”
Lily covered her mouth.
“And there’s something else.”
Victor closed his eyes.
Of course there was.
Daniel said, “The SUV was registered to a shell company.”
“Connected to Serena?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Daniel hesitated.
“To Evelyn Marrow.”
Lily whispered, “My biological mother?”
Daniel answered quietly.
“Yes.”
Victor looked at Lily.
Then his phone chimed.
A new message had arrived from the number saved under Lily’s name.
It contained only an address.
And one sentence.
May you like
IF YOU WANT REBECCA ALIVE, BRING LILY.
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