Chapter 15 - The Call From My Daughter
For seven weeks, there was no sign of Emily or Noah.
Authorities searched Rainer properties across three continents.
Every facility was empty.
Miriam released more documents each Friday.
Each release exposed another layer of the Bellweather program.
Yet she never mentioned the children again.
Marcus disappeared.
Vanessa remained with Miriam, according to intelligence reports, although no one knew whether she was a prisoner or accomplice.
Sarah’s role became impossible to understand.
The footage clearly showed her entering the secure residence.
Another camera captured her carrying a sleeping Noah to the vehicle.
Emily walked beside her voluntarily.
My daughter had taken Sarah’s hand.
Perhaps Sarah told them she was rescuing them.
Perhaps she believed she was.
I returned to the mansion because there was nowhere else left to go.
The evidence teams had emptied the hidden rooms.
The damaged alarm panel had been replaced.
The glass coffee table was gone.
I could not look at it without seeing Noah beneath it.
I left Emily’s torn yellow sweater hanging over the back of a chair.
Every night, I played the original phone recording.
The hanger rising.
My arrival.
Emily’s five words.
She does it every day, Daddy.
Those words destroyed the lie inside our home.
They also opened the door to a much older lie surrounding my entire family.
Mercer Global entered bankruptcy protection.
I sold my remaining properties and used the money to fund the search.
Former Bellweather survivors began contacting me.
Some wanted help.
Some wanted revenge.
Several claimed Miriam had saved their lives.
Others warned that she was preparing something larger than the document releases.
Victor Sloane offered information in exchange for immunity.
I met him in a federal detention medical unit.
Without the wheelchair and staged weakness, he looked healthier than he had during the video conference.
He smiled when I entered.
“Your father always said you were too sentimental to lead.”
“Where are my children?”
“Miriam moves them every forty-eight hours.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does she need Emily for?”
“To reverse the damage.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“It is true. But incomplete.”
He leaned closer.
“Noah stabilizes the Bellweather subjects. Emily can reverse the treatment. Together, their blood can also reproduce it.”
“Reproduce what?”
“The original enhancement.”
I stared at him.
“You want to begin the experiments again.”
“Not I.”
“Who?”
Sloane smiled.
“Sarah.”
I stood.
“She spent four years trying to cure the survivors.”
“She spent four years refining the compound.”
“You are lying.”
“Ask yourself why she never escaped. Ask why Miriam needs her. Ask why your daughter walked willingly into that car.”
He said Sarah believed the Bellweather research could be perfected.
Not to create weapons.
To eliminate fear, strengthen memory, slow neurological disease, and perhaps extend human life.
She no longer wanted to destroy the research.
She wanted to control it ethically.
But ethical control required completing the work.
It required Emily and Noah.
“You expect me to believe their mother would experiment on them?”
“Parents justify terrible things when they believe the future depends on their children.”
I left before I killed him.
That evening, Detective Ortiz came to the mansion.
She was no longer officially assigned to the case, but she had continued investigating.
She carried a map marked with seven locations.
Each location corresponded to a transmission point used by Miriam’s document releases.
Together, they formed a line across the northern coast.
The final point had not yet been used.
It was an island called Saint Orison.
The island had once housed a military hospital.
Mercer Global purchased it twenty years earlier through a shell company.
“My father owned an island?”
“Not according to any public record.”
“What is there now?”
“Satellite images show recent construction, power generation, and aircraft activity.”
“When do we leave?”
Ortiz looked toward the dark windows.
“There’s something else.”
She gave me a photograph taken at a private airfield two days earlier.
Marcus stood beside a cargo plane.
Vanessa was with him.
She was no longer restrained.
They were speaking to Sarah.
Miriam did not appear in the image.
“Maybe they turned against her,” I said.
“Or maybe Miriam was never leading them.”
Before Ortiz could explain, the mansion telephone rang.
The sound echoed through the empty foyer.
No one had called that line since the night Vanessa contacted me.
I answered.
At first, I heard only wind.
Then a child breathed into the receiver.
“Daddy?”
My knees weakened.
“Emily.”
Ortiz moved closer, signaling for me to keep her talking.
“Sweetheart, where are you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Is Noah with you?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“Let me speak to him.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Who is there with you?”
A long pause.
“Mommy Sarah.”
“Is Miriam there?”
“No.”
“Vanessa?”
“She helped us get away.”
Hope rose so sharply that it hurt.
“Then tell me where you are. I’ll come alone.”
“You can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because Mommy says they followed us.”
“Who followed you?”
“The people from the island.”
Ortiz pointed toward the map.
Saint Orison.
“Emily, listen carefully. Your mother may believe she is protecting you, but you need to tell me where you are.”
“I want to come home.”
“I’m bringing you home.”
“But Daddy…”
Her voice began to shake.
“What is it?”
“I remembered something.”
“What did you remember?”
“The night Mommy Sarah died.”
I gripped the phone.
“You were six years old. It’s all right if the memory is confused.”
“It isn’t.”
“What did you see?”
“I followed her outside.”
Wind roared through the line.
A voice spoke near Emily, too faint for me to recognize.
She hurried.
“Mommy got into the black car. But someone else got into her car.”
“The woman who died in the crash?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see her face?”
Emily began crying.
“It was the red coat lady.”
My mind stopped.
Miriam’s body had been placed in Sarah’s car.
But Miriam was alive.
Unless the woman in the red coat had been someone else.
“Emily, who told you that woman was Miriam?”
“Mommy Sarah.”
I looked at Ortiz.
Her expression had changed.
“Where is Sarah now?” I asked.
“She’s standing outside.”
“Why?”
“She said she heard the helicopter.”
A mechanical roar became audible through the phone.
“Emily, hide. Take Noah and hide right now.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“Tell me what you see.”
“Lights over the water.”
“Anything else?”
“A big white building.”
Saint Orison’s former military hospital was white.
Ortiz sent the coordinates to a federal response team.
“Emily, stay on the phone.”
“I’m trying.”
A gunshot cracked in the distance.
Emily gasped.
“Daddy, Mommy told me to ask you something.”
“What?”
“She said to ask if you still have the key.”
“What key?”
“The one Grandpa hid inside the family picture.”
I turned toward the wall.
Dozens of framed photographs lined the foyer.
One showed my father holding Emily on the day she was born.
I pulled it down.
Something rattled inside the frame.
“Emily, I found it.”
“Don’t open the door until you know what it does.”
“What door?”
“The last door.”
Another gunshot sounded.
The line filled with static.
“Emily?”
Someone took the phone from her.
A woman spoke.
At first, I thought it was Sarah.
Then she laughed.
The sound was almost identical to Vanessa’s.
“You have been looking for the wrong mother, Daniel.”
“Who are you?”
“You met me at Sarah’s funeral.”
The foyer lights went out.
Only the moon remained, shining through the windows.
The woman continued.
“Bring the key to Saint Orison. Come before sunrise, or Emily will learn why your father chose her before she was even born.”
The call ended.
Ortiz turned on her flashlight.
I removed the back of the photograph.
A black key fell into my palm.
Beneath it was a picture I had never seen.
My father stood inside a hospital room beside two identical blonde girls.
One was Vanessa.
The other wore a red coat.
On the back, my father had written four words.
Only one must survive.
Outside the mansion, an engine started.
We ran to the door.
A black car was disappearing through the gates.
On the front step lay Emily’s torn yellow sweater.
It was still warm.
And pinned to the sleeve was a note written in Sarah’s handwriting.
Daniel,
Do not come to the island.
May you like
The woman who called you is not Miriam.
And the child traveling with me is not Noah.
