Chapter 7 - The Missing Ninety Minutes
Daniel stared at the photograph.
“That is not me.”
Emily wanted to believe him.
The man wore Daniel’s clothes. His face matched Daniel’s. His left hand rested on the bed rail, revealing the same small scar across the thumb.
The time stamp read 8:19 a.m.
At 8:14 a.m., according to the hospital parking camera, Daniel had been outside speaking to a surgeon.
“It could be altered,” Reyes said. “Or generated from multiple images.”
Daniel looked at Emily.
“I never touched your dressing.”
Emily studied the photograph.
The man’s wedding ring was on his right hand.
Daniel wore his on the left.
“It was staged,” she said.
Daniel noticed the ring and exhaled.
Reyes did not relax.
“Someone wanted us to identify him as Daniel while leaving a small contradiction.”
“Why?” Emily asked.
“To create doubt.”
The printed address led to an abandoned train station outside Bellweather, ten miles from Briar House.
Midnight was four hours away.
Before leaving the nursery, Reyes ordered every file photographed and secured.
Emily found one document beneath the fifth bed.
It contained a series of dates.
Her birthday.
Daniel’s birthday.
Natalie’s birthday.
Grace’s birth date.
Several dates had one phrase written beside them.
Memory correction completed.
Emily showed it to Daniel.
“Do you remember anything before you were six?”
“Pieces.”
“What pieces?”
“A white room. A woman singing. Needles.”
“Was the woman Linda?”
“I always thought so.”
He touched the scar on his thumb.
Emily looked at it.
“How did you get that?”
“Broken glass when I was nine.”
“Are you certain?”
Daniel’s hand dropped.
“No.”
Detective Reyes separated them for formal interviews before the train-station operation. She wanted independent timelines from the hospital.
Daniel stated that after Emily’s first surgery, he left the room at 7:52 a.m. to speak with Dr. Wells. He returned at 8:23.
Security footage confirmed most of this.
But from 8:04 to 8:17, Daniel disappeared from every hospital camera.
He remembered walking to a vending machine.
No footage showed him there.
The missing thirteen minutes were part of a larger problem.
Phone location records indicated Daniel had entered the hospital at 5:40 a.m.
His car entered at 7:10.
Emily had arrived by ambulance at 4:58.
“How did your phone get there before your car?” Reyes asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did someone else have it?”
“No.”
“Were you at the hospital before you claim?”
“I woke at home when Emily collapsed.”
Emily remembered Daniel kneeling beside her in the bathroom.
He called the ambulance.
He followed in his car.
Or she believed he did.
Her own memory contained gaps.
She remembered pain.
A towel pressed beneath her.
Daniel telling her not to close her eyes.
Then the ambulance lights.
“Your home security footage was deleted,” Reyes said.
“When?”
“At 4:22 a.m.”
Emily’s collapse occurred at 4:31.
The detective leaned closer.
“Mrs. Carter, what caused the original bleeding that required surgery?”
“I thought the cyst ruptured.”
“Dr. Wells now believes the injury may have been caused by an injection.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“An injection of what?”
“A compound designed to break down scar tissue.”
Emily looked at her arm.
She had found a small bruise near her elbow the previous night. Linda told her it looked like an insect bite.
Linda had come to the house to deliver jewelry for Natalie’s wedding.
She insisted Emily try on a bracelet.
The clasp scratched Emily’s skin.
Or perhaps injected something.
“Linda did it,” Daniel said.
“Possibly,” Reyes replied. “But the dose required precise timing.”
“Mother knew when Emily would be alone.”
“She was not alone.”
Reyes looked directly at Daniel.
“You were there.”
The train-station meeting could be a trap, yet police prepared to proceed.
Emily was taken to a command vehicle three blocks away while tactical officers surrounded the abandoned station.
Daniel remained beside her under supervision.
At 11:59 p.m., every light inside the station turned on.
A message appeared across the old electronic departure board.
WELCOME HOME, E-5.
Emily’s phone rang.
It was her own stolen number.
She answered.
A woman spoke.
“Enter the station alone.”
“Let me speak to Grace.”
“You already heard her.”
“Let me see her.”
A video appeared.
Grace sat on a bench inside the station holding Natalie’s hand.
Both looked unharmed.
The hooded woman stood behind them.
“Emily,” Natalie said, “do what she says.”
Detective Reyes listened through Emily’s earpiece.
“Tell them Daniel comes with you,” Reyes whispered.
Emily repeated the demand.
The woman laughed softly.
“Daniel is already here.”
Every officer in the command vehicle turned toward him.
Daniel stood beside Emily.
On the live feed, a man walked from the shadows behind Natalie.
He looked exactly like Daniel.
Same height.
Same face.
Same scar.
The duplicate stopped beneath the station clock.
Grace looked toward him and smiled.
“Daddy.”
Emily turned slowly toward her husband.
Daniel’s face had gone white.
The voice on the phone whispered, “Ask the man beside you where he was during the missing ninety minutes.”
“What ninety minutes?” Emily asked.
“The night you met him.”
Emily remembered the charity dinner seven years earlier.
She had left the ballroom after becoming dizzy.
Daniel found her outside.
At least, she believed it was Daniel.
She lost nearly an hour and a half of that night.
The man beside her whispered, “Emily, don’t listen.”
On the screen, the second Daniel rolled up his sleeve.
A black number had been tattooed beneath his wrist.
D-1.
The Daniel beside Emily had no tattoo.
The woman’s voice continued.
“One of them was raised as Linda’s son.”
May you like
The second Daniel smiled at the camera.
“The other was sent to marry you.”
