Chapter 9 - Tomorrow’s Date
We did not wait for morning.
Police put Lena’s school on lockdown overnight and arranged protection for every student entrance. Lena stayed with me in a secured hotel suite under an assumed name.
She hated it.
“I’m tired of hiding.”
“So am I.”
“Then stop making me.”
The sentence hit harder than she intended.
I sat beside her on the couch.
“I’m not hiding you because I’m ashamed.”
“I know.”
“I’m hiding you because someone may try to take you.”
“They already did.”
I had no answer.
At 3:12 a.m., Rachel knocked on my bedroom door.
“She’s asleep.”
I followed her into the sitting room.
Rachel looked exhausted.
“You need to know something else about Daniel.”
“What?”
“He contacted me last year.”
I stared at her.
“He said Lena had developed behavioral problems. He offered me another five million if I signed a statement saying mental illness ran in my family.”
“Why?”
“To make it easier to have her declared unstable later.”
My hands curled into fists.
“Did you sign?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Rachel laughed bitterly. “Tell you how? I had spent years being told you wanted nothing to do with us. I didn’t even know where Lena was.”
Before I could reply, Mara entered with Detective Ruiz.
They had traced Daniel’s abandoned phone.
“He made one call before shutting it off,” Ruiz said.
“To whom?”
“Dr. Samuel Reeves.”
The old family doctor.
The man who signed Lena’s hospital transfer.
Police went to his house.
He was gone.
But his computer had been left running.
On the screen was an open email to Daniel.
Mara read it aloud.
THE ORIGINAL SAMPLE STILL EXISTS. IF ETHAN GETS IT, THE SUCCESSION CLAUSE IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.
I frowned.
“What original sample?”
Mara looked at Rachel.
Rachel had gone white.
She whispered, “Oh, no.”
“What?”
She looked at Lena’s bedroom door.
May you like
“The DNA test wasn’t only about paternity.”
