Chapter 4 - The House Beneath the Orchard
The property had no road.
Garrison drove them through twelve miles of forest before turning through an abandoned apple orchard.
At its center stood the ruins of a farmhouse.
Emily stared.
"You brought me to a burned building?"
"Look again."
Garrison moved a rusted section of fencing.
Beneath dead vines was a steel hatch.
The underground residence had once been a Cold War shelter.
Garrison's father had renovated it during the years when Blackwood Biomedical conducted sensitive research.
It contained bedrooms, medical equipment, communications systems, stored food, and an independent power supply.
Emily hated it immediately.
"It feels like a bunker."
"It is."
"I'm pregnant, not a fugitive."
"At the moment, you're both."
Ross remained aboveground to continue the investigation.
Dr. Voss visited using rotating vehicles.
For the next four months, Emily vanished from the world.
Julian publicly played the abandoned husband.
He gave interviews implying Emily had suffered emotionally after her infertility diagnosis.
He expressed concern.
He begged for information.
Then, exactly six weeks after Emily disappeared, he filed for emergency access to several joint financial accounts.
His attorney claimed Emily was mentally unstable.
Chloe moved into the Carter house eleven days later.
Emily watched every development on a secure laptop.
She never contacted Julian.
That silence tortured him more effectively than anything she could have said.
Meanwhile, her twins grew.
By week eighteen, she could feel movement.
By week twenty-two, Garrison could sometimes see kicks through the fabric of her shirt when they sat at the kitchen table.
He never asked to touch her belly.
One evening Emily took his hand and placed it there herself.
A tiny foot struck his palm.
Garrison froze.
Emily laughed.
"That's Baby B."
"How do you know?"
"Baby B kicks like an angry horse."
Another movement.
Garrison smiled.
It transformed his face.
For a moment he did not look like a billionaire, investigator, or grieving father.
He looked like a grandfather meeting someone he already loved.
Emily noticed tears in his eyes.
"You miss Rebecca."
"Every day."
"Tell me about her."
So he did.
Rebecca Blackwood had been brilliant, stubborn, funny, and incapable of walking past an injured animal.
She had trained as a pediatrician.
At twenty-nine, she married a physician named Aaron Vale.
At thirty-one, she sought fertility treatment after two years of trying to conceive.
At thirty-two, she became pregnant.
At thirty-two, she miscarried.
Three days later, she died.
"Officially, pulmonary embolism," Garrison said.
"And unofficially?"
"Her blood samples disappeared."
Emily looked up.
"From the same hospital where Julian trained?"
Garrison nodded.
That connection had begun everything.
Months of investigation revealed that Julian had been a fellow at the hospital during Rebecca's treatment.
Then came something worse.
Julian had accessed Rebecca's chart.
Not once.
Seventeen times.
Emily stared at the access logs.
"Did he treat her?"
"No."
"Then why?"
"We don't know."
The answer arrived two days later.
Ross called from Washington.
"We found an archived email."
Garrison activated the secure speaker.
"From Julian?"
"To Conrad."
Emily's entire body went cold.
Ross read the timestamp.
Eight years earlier.
Then he read the subject line.
BLACKWOOD PREGNANCY SUCCESSFUL.
Garrison gripped the table.
"What did it say?"
Ross hesitated.
"Daniel."
"Read it."
The email contained six sentences.
The last destroyed the room.
Father remains unaware embryo B survived transfer.
Garrison closed his eyes.
Emily leaned forward.
"Embryo B?"
Ross said, "We believe Rebecca was carrying twins."
Garrison stood so abruptly his chair fell backward.
"No."
"We found another record."
"She miscarried."
"One pregnancy was lost."
Garrison stared at the speaker.
"What happened to the other embryo?"
"We don't know."
Emily saw something terrifying enter Garrison's expression.
Not grief.
Hope.
Hope after eight years of burial.
It was more dangerous than grief.
Ross continued.
"There's something else."
"What?"
"The record lists the genetic father."
Garrison's hand shook.
"Who?"
"Aaron Vale was not the biological father."
Emily stopped breathing.
May you like
Ross spoke the name.
"Conrad Blackwood."
