Chapter 7 - DR. PIERCE
The police wanted Ethan at the station.
He refused.
Claire convinced them to let paramedics treat Marcus first, then used every connection her family had to keep the scene from becoming a media circus.
Ethan sat on the curb with blood on his tuxedo.
Not his blood.
His mother’s.
Marcus’s.
Maybe both.
“Who took her?” Ethan asked again.
Marcus lay on a stretcher.
“I don’t know.”
“You recognized the car.”
Marcus looked away.
Ethan stepped closer.
“I saw your face.”
Marcus finally sighed.
“Dr. Nolan Pierce.”
Claire stared at him.
“The doctor from the letter?”
Marcus nodded.
“He’s alive?”
“Very.”
“Why would a doctor kidnap someone twenty-five years later?”
Marcus gave Ethan a grim look.
“Because some mistakes don’t stay buried.”
Pierce lived outside the city in a private estate surrounded by iron gates.
Ethan and Claire reached it before midnight.
They had changed clothes at a hotel.
Their reception continued without them for forty-seven minutes before Claire’s father finally sent everyone home.
The wedding cake had never been cut.
Ethan didn’t care.
He pressed the intercom.
No answer.
Again.
Finally, an old man’s voice crackled through.
“Go away.”
“Nolan Pierce?”
Silence.
“My name is Ethan Hale.”
The gate buzzed open immediately.
Claire looked at Ethan.
“That’s not creepy at all.”
Inside, the house was dark except for one study lamp.
Dr. Pierce was seventy-six, thin, and breathing through an oxygen tube.
He stared at Ethan for a long time.
“You look like her.”
“Where is she?”
Pierce shook his head.
“I didn’t take Nora.”
“Marcus says you did.”
“Marcus lies professionally.”
Ethan slammed both hands on the desk.
“I watched men drag my mother into a car.”
Pierce barely reacted.
“Then Richard has lost control of this.”
“My father?”
Pierce smiled sadly.
“Still calling him that.”
Ethan went still.
Claire stepped closer.
“What does that mean?”
Pierce reached for a folder.
His hand trembled.
“I’ve spent twenty-five years wondering when this day would come.”
He opened it.
Inside were medical records from St. Vincent’s.
January 14, 2002.
Ethan found Nora’s name.
Then Richard’s.
Blood alcohol concentration: .19.
Ethan stopped.
“What is this?”
Pierce looked at him.
“Your mother wasn’t driving that night.”
Claire whispered, “Richard was.”
Pierce nodded.
“He crossed the center line.”
Ethan couldn’t speak.
“He was drunk?”
“Yes.”
“And he blamed her?”
“Yes.”
Pierce closed his eyes.
“I helped him.”
“Why?”
“Money. Cowardice. Fear. Pick one.”
Ethan wanted to hit him.
Instead he whispered, “Where is Nora?”
Pierce stared toward the window.
“There’s one person Richard feared more than Nora.”
“Who?”
“The woman who saw the crash.”
Ethan frowned.
“Who saw it?”
Pierce looked directly at him.
“Your grandmother.”
Ethan’s mouth went dry.
“My grandmother died before I was born.”
“No.”
Pierce reached into the folder and placed a recent photograph on the table.
An elderly woman sat in a wheelchair beside a lake.
Alive.
May you like
Pierce said, “Your father has lied to you about more than one dead woman.”
---
