Chapter 4 - The Girl Who Had Two Mothers
Edward did not remember leaving the hidden chamber.
One moment he was holding the dead phone. The next he was standing in the foyer, telling Noah to prepare the armored SUV and wake the pilot for the helicopter.
Grace refused to let Lily go anywhere.
“She is my daughter.”
Edward held up the photograph of Catherine and the newborn. “She may be mine too.”
“May be?” Grace’s fear turned to anger. “You look at one picture and decide you can take her?”
“I am not taking her. I am trying to stop the people who already did.”
Lily stood between them, pale and silent.
Edward lowered himself until they were eye level.
“You do not have to come to the lake.”
“Thomas told me to help him.”
“He may not be Thomas.”
“He knew Buddy.”
“So did whoever took him.”
Lily touched the scar beneath her ear. “I remember the lake.”
Grace stared at her. “You have never been there.”
“I have dreams. A red door. A room that smells like pennies. A boy singing because I was crying.”
Edward felt the air leave his lungs.
Thomas used to sing the same four notes whenever Catherine’s pregnancy made her ill. He called it the brave song.
Lily hummed four notes.
Edward turned away before she saw his face collapse.
Noah approached with new information. Meridian Biologics had no active employees, no tax filings, and no public operations. Yet it drew eleven million dollars a year from a Caldwell family trust established by Edward’s grandfather. The withdrawals had been authorized by a rotating set of medical consultants.
The current consultant was Dr. Malcolm Reed.
Edward knew the name only indirectly. Reed had served on Catherine’s oncology team during her final months. After her death, he disappeared from public practice.
Grace whispered, “He was the one who told me Daniel died.”
Lily looked at her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”
Grace knelt. “Because I could not survive losing you too.”
The words hurt both of them.
Edward made a decision. Grace and Lily would travel in the armored vehicle with Noah. Edward would take the helicopter to Bellweather and arrive first. If the property was a trap, Lily would never reach it.
As they prepared to leave, a guard ran from the library.
Marcus had vanished.
The windows were locked. The fireplace was cold. The only exit was a hidden panel behind a law book Edward’s grandfather had installed decades ago.
Marcus had known the mansion’s secret routes better than Edward.
On the library desk, he left a handwritten note.
You are looking at the wrong M.
Beneath it was an old photograph of Catherine standing beside a man on the Lake Bellweather dock.
The man was not Malcolm Reed.
It was Michael Caldwell, Edward’s older brother.
Michael had died in a sailing accident twenty-five years earlier.
Or so Edward had believed.
The helicopter lifted from the lawn under a bruised evening sky. Edward sat across from Noah, staring at the photograph.
Michael had been brilliant, cruel, and adored by their father. At twenty-six, he was expected to inherit Caldwell Industries. Then his sailboat exploded during a family regatta. No body was recovered.
Edward inherited everything.
A year later, Catherine married him.
For years, Edward had wondered whether she had once loved Michael.
The photograph answered that question. Catherine’s hand rested on Michael’s chest. On the dock behind them was the cedar-tree emblem.
“When was this taken?” Edward asked.
Noah examined the border. “At least three years after Michael’s supposed death.”
The helicopter crossed dark forest and frozen marshland. Lake Bellweather appeared beneath them like a sheet of black glass.
The research property stood on the north shore. Most buildings were dark, but one long structure glowed with pale blue lights.
Noah pointed. “Vehicle leaving the rear entrance.”
A black van raced toward the tree line.
Edward ordered the pilot to land beside the dock.
The moment the skids touched ground, floodlights ignited across the compound.
A siren wailed.
The main doors opened.
A young man stepped outside.
He was tall and thin, wearing a gray hospital uniform. His dark hair fell over his forehead. A scar cut beneath his left ear.
Edward knew him before logic could object.
“Thomas.”
The young man looked up at the helicopter.
Then armed guards emerged behind him.
One raised a rifle.
May you like
Thomas shouted, “Get down!”
The first shot shattered the helicopter window.
