Chapter 9 - THE MESSAGE SENT BEFORE ANNA VANISHED
Anna Lawson left behind no suitcase.
No packed clothes.
No emptied bank account.
No sign that she planned to disappear.
Her phone went dead at 10:42 p.m. six nights earlier.
The final signal came from a parking garage near Carter Biomedical’s Baltimore research office.
Security footage showed Anna entering the garage.
No footage showed her leaving.
That frightened Emma more than almost anything she had learned.
Anna had lived twenty-two years without Emma.
Now, days after Emma discovered her existence, she might already be dead.
Morales tried to keep expectations realistic.
Emma refused.
“She’s alive until you prove otherwise.”
No one argued.
Caleb moved temporarily into a hotel near the hospital after police advised him not to return to his apartment.
Emma asked why.
Morales showed them photographs.
Someone had searched Caleb’s apartment while he was at the hospital.
Nothing valuable was taken.
Only a folder containing wedding venue notes.
The message was obvious.
Someone knew about the engagement.
Someone was still watching.
Caleb wanted Emma under federal protection.
Emma wanted out of the hospital.
Doctors released her under strict conditions.
She and Caleb moved into a secure apartment arranged by investigators.
For the first time since graduation, Emma stood under a normal shower.
She cried for twenty minutes.
Not loudly.
No dramatic collapse.
She simply stood beneath the water and let grief move through her.
Her mother.
Her twin.
Her father.
Her childhood.
Each memory now carried a second meaning.
Vivian’s obsession with where Emma went.
The rule that Emma could never spend nights at friends’ houses without permission.
The unexplained yearly medical tests.
The insistence that Emma sign documents she never read.
The panic when Emma once mentioned genetic ancestry testing.
Emma had thought Vivian was controlling.
Now she understood.
Vivian had been maintaining a prison without bars.
That evening, Morales arrived with a laptop.
“We recovered Anna’s email account.”
Emma sat immediately.
“Anything?”
“One draft.”
“Sent?”
“No.”
“Show me.”
Morales opened it.
The subject line read:
IF I DISAPPEAR.
The draft had no recipient.
The message was short.
My name is Anna Lawson.
I believe my real name may be Anna Carter.
Margaret lied to me about my mother.
I found documents after she died.
There is another girl.
Emma Carter.
I think she is my sister.
If I disappear before I can reach her, Carter Biomedical is involved.
The family trust is not about money.
There are names inside it.
Children.
A lot of children.
And someone has been paying to keep them quiet for twenty-two years.
Emma stopped reading.
“Children?”
Morales nodded.
“Your father mentioned clinical trial patients.”
Emma scrolled.
There was one more line.
The key is split in two.
Emma frowned.
“What key?”
Morales said, “The locket might be one half.”
Emma reached instinctively toward her neck, though the locket was still evidence.
“What’s the other?”
“We think Anna had it.”
Caleb asked, “Did her apartment show anything?”
“Yes.”
Morales opened a photograph.
A broken chain lay beside Anna’s bed.
Attached to it was an empty oval frame.
It looked like Emma’s locket.
The twin half.
Emma whispered, “Matching lockets.”
“Probably.”
“Did Vivian know Anna had hers?”
“We don’t know.”
Emma stood.
“What about Margaret Lawson?”
“Dead eight months ago.”
“How?”
“Stroke.”
Emma gave Morales a look.
The detective understood.
“We’re reviewing it.”
Emma walked to the window.
City lights blurred below.
Her sister had discovered the truth alone.
She had searched for Emma.
And someone had stopped her six days before Emma could know she existed.
Caleb moved beside her.
“We’ll find her.”
Emma looked at him.
“You can’t promise that.”
“No.”
“Then don’t.”
He nodded.
She leaned against him anyway.
Morales’s phone rang.
She answered.
Listened.
Then her eyes shifted toward Emma.
“What?”
Morales ended the call.
“Baltimore police found Anna’s car.”
Emma turned.
“Where?”
“Outside an abandoned Carter Biomedical clinic.”
“Is she there?”
“They haven’t entered yet.”
“Why?”
Morales hesitated.
“Because someone left a message on the windshield.”
Emma’s skin prickled.
“What message?”
Morales showed her a photograph.
May you like
A single sentence had been written across the glass in red lipstick.
EMMA MUST COME ALONE.
