Chapter 5 - Briar House
The photograph contained almost no visible background.
A wooden chair.
A pale wall.
A narrow window covered by metal mesh.
Grace and Natalie were positioned beneath a ceiling light bright enough to erase most shadows.
Still, Detective Reyes found three details.
A yellow flower painted in the corner.
A strip of dark green flooring.
A reflection in the window that looked like a water tower.
Police analysts searched properties connected to Mercer Medical, Linda’s private accounts, and former research employees.
They found nine buildings with green flooring.
Three near water towers.
Only one had once been called Briar House.
It stood outside a small town named Bellweather, nearly ninety miles north of the city.
Official records described it as a rehabilitation center for children with neurological disorders.
It had closed five years earlier after a fire.
Daniel wanted to go with the police.
Reyes refused.
“If the kidnappers want your vote, they may be watching you.”
“They have my sister and a child who may be my daughter.”
“We don’t know whether Grace is biologically yours.”
“She is Emily’s.”
“That does not make you useful during a tactical operation.”
Daniel clenched his jaw.
Emily watched from her hospital bed as he fought the instinct to argue.
Then she noticed something on the photograph.
“Zoom in on Natalie’s left hand.”
Reyes enlarged the image.
Natalie’s fingers were bent beneath the rope.
Her index finger pointed toward the floor.
Three fingers were extended.
Then two.
Then four.
“Three, two, four,” Emily said.
“A room number?” Daniel asked.
“Or a time.”
Reyes studied the image.
Emily had spent years working as a forensic accountant. She knew how people hid meaning inside ordinary patterns.
“Look at Grace’s shoes.”
The girl wore one red shoe and one blue shoe.
“That wasn’t accidental.”
Daniel looked closer.
“The colors of the research divisions.”
Emily turned toward him.
“What?”
“Mercer Medical used color codes. Red for biological materials. Blue for device engineering.”
“And yellow?”
“Clinical records.”
The yellow flower on the wall.
“Green flooring?” Reyes asked.
“Administrative access.”
Emily pointed to Natalie’s hand again.
“Three-two-four may refer to a file.”
Daniel opened his laptop and accessed the company’s archived directory.
Most records required security credentials he no longer possessed, but public index codes remained searchable.
File 324 belonged to a program called Helix Bridge.
The description contained six words.
Maternal inheritance and adaptive identity transfer.
Emily read it twice.
“What does adaptive identity transfer mean?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said.
Reyes did.
“Changing records so children can be reassigned to different families.”
The room went quiet.
Daniel scrolled farther.
Helix Bridge had been authorized nine years earlier by Dr. Malcolm Mercer, Daniel’s father.
“That’s impossible,” Daniel said. “He shut down the research division.”
“Maybe he shut it down because he discovered what it had become,” Emily replied.
A second document listed project supervisors.
Dr. Evelyn Voss.
Linda Mercer.
Rebecca Ellis.
“Rebecca again,” Emily said.
Daniel looked at the date.
“This was before I married Rebecca.”
“Was that her real name?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
Reyes’s phone rang.
The tactical team had reached Briar House.
The building was empty.
No Natalie.
No Grace.
But in Room 324, officers found two ropes tied to chairs and a phone still recording.
The photograph had been taken less than an hour earlier.
The kidnappers knew police were coming.
“They moved them,” Daniel said.
Reyes listened to the call.
Her face tightened.
“What else?”
She ended the call.
“There are underground rooms beneath the building.”
“Were there children?” Emily asked.
“No children.”
“Bodies?”
Reyes hesitated.
“Human remains.”
“How many?”
“At least seven.”
Emily closed her eyes.
The second blood sample beneath her bandage had come from a dead woman. Someone had preserved it for years.
“What condition are the remains in?”
“Some are old. One appears recent.”
“Natalie?”
“No identification yet.”
Daniel’s phone received another message.
The photograph showed the Mercer Medical shareholder authorization form.
A red line had been drawn beneath Daniel’s signature field.
Midnight was six hours away.
The second image showed Grace’s abandoned red shoe beside an open furnace.
Emily felt nausea rise.
“Call Linda,” she said.
Reyes frowned.
“She is in custody.”
“Let me speak to her.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You need rest.”
“My stolen eggs created that child. Someone placed blood from your first wife under my bandage. Linda knows what connects them.”
Reyes considered the request.
Finally, she arranged a secure video call.
Linda appeared on a small screen from an interview room at the police station. Her hair was disordered, and her expensive wedding dress had been replaced with gray detention clothing.
When she saw Emily, hatred surfaced.
“You should have died quietly.”
Daniel flinched.
Emily did not.
“Who is Grace?”
Linda smiled faintly.
“A mistake.”
“Is she my daughter?”
“She was made from your cells.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“You think biology makes a mother?”
“No. Protecting a child does.”
For the first time, something uncertain moved behind Linda’s eyes.
Emily leaned closer to the screen.
“Natalie protected her. You sold children to families and changed their identities.”
“I rescued children from women who would have wasted them.”
“You stole them.”
“I gave them purpose.”
Daniel moved into view.
“Were you ever my mother?”
Linda’s face became expressionless.
“I raised you.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only answer you deserve.”
“Whose blood was under Emily’s bandage?”
Linda stared at him.
“Rebecca’s.”
“Who was Rebecca?”
A strange sadness crossed Linda’s face.
“The only woman your father ever truly loved.”
“My father?”
Daniel looked at Emily.
Linda continued.
“She was his research partner. She believed they could prevent hereditary disease before birth. Then she discovered Malcolm was using the program to create replacement heirs.”
“Replacement heirs?” Emily repeated.
Linda’s gaze shifted toward her.
“Children designed to inherit what their parents could not be trusted to keep.”
“The company?”
“The patents. The bloodlines. The names.”
Daniel’s voice became unsteady.
“Was Rebecca my biological mother?”
“Yes.”
“And my father?”
“Malcolm.”
Daniel gripped the back of the chair.
“Why did you pretend to be my mother?”
“Because Rebecca tried to take you away.”
“What happened to her?”
Linda’s eyes moved toward the camera.
“She became your wife.”
Nobody spoke.
Daniel’s face emptied.
Linda smiled.
“Not the real Rebecca, of course. The woman you married was trained to use her identity. She was supposed to watch you.”
Emily struggled to follow.
“Who trained her?”
“The people who still own all of us.”
The police interview-room door opened behind Linda.
Someone outside the camera’s view spoke to her.
Linda’s smile disappeared.
She leaned forward urgently.
“Do not sign the sale agreement,” she told Daniel. “That is what they need.”
“You told me to approve it.”
“I thought I controlled the transaction.”
“And now?”
“Now I know Evelyn is alive.”
Dr. Evelyn Voss.
The project supervisor.
The interview-room lights flickered.
Linda looked toward the ceiling.
“Get me out of here,” she whispered.
The screen went black.
Reyes grabbed her phone.
Seconds later, an alarm sounded through the connection.
An officer shouted.
Then came two sharp cracks.
Gunshots.
The video returned briefly.
Linda lay facedown across the table.
A dark pool spread beneath her.
May you like
Behind her, written across the glass wall in blood, were four words.
BRING EMILY TO THE GREENHOUSE.
