Chapter 5 - Seven Faces
The photographs from the lake house arrived at the police station before noon.
Detective Bell did not show all of them to Valeria.
He showed her seven.
Each photograph featured a girl with dark brown hair, pale green eyes and a small crescent-shaped birthmark below the left ear.
Valeria had the same mark.
The girls were different ages.
One appeared to be six.
Another ten.
The oldest looked approximately nineteen.
Dates had been written beneath each photograph.
Numbers appeared beside the dates.
V-1.
V-2.
V-3.
The image of Valeria was labeled V-7.
“Are they my sisters?” she asked.
“We don’t know.”
“They look like me.”
“Yes.”
“Are they alive?”
“We’re trying to determine that.”
Valeria pointed at the oldest girl.
“I saw her.”
Bell looked sharply at her.
“Where?”
“In a dream.”
“Describe it.”
“She was standing in a white room. She told me not to drink the water.”
“When did you have the dream?”
“After the lake house.”
Bell slid the photograph closer.
The girl’s file number was V-4.
Her name, written on the back, was Celeste Arden.
According to public records, Celeste had disappeared from a foster home three years earlier.
She had been sixteen.
Her foster parents said she ran away.
Police had found no evidence of abduction.
Valeria touched the edge of the photograph.
“She called me Seven.”
Bell leaned forward.
“You remember that?”
“I thought it was a dream.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“Seven, wake up before they move you.”
The hospital room door opened.
Elena entered with Simone behind her.
Valeria pulled her hand away from the photographs.
Her mother looked smaller than she had the night before.
Her hair was uncombed.
Dark shadows surrounded her eyes.
Daniel had been arrested that morning on charges of interfering with medical care and attempting to destroy potential evidence.
Those charges were temporary.
The more serious investigation had only begun.
Elena had agreed to speak in exchange for protective custody.
Valeria watched her approach.
“Are you going to tell the truth now?”
Elena sat across from her.
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“As much as I know.”
“You said people gave me to you.”
Elena nodded.
“Daniel and I could not have children.”
“You never told me that.”
“We told everyone you were born while we were living out of state.”
“Where did I come from?”
“A clinic.”
“Novagen?”
Elena’s eyes lowered.
“Not officially.”
“Stop answering like that.”
“I’m trying.”
“You watched them hurt me.”
“I tried to protect you.”
“You were in the room.”
Elena began to cry.
“I didn’t know what they planned to do.”
“The video says you knew I was remembering.”
“I knew they had given you medication before.”
“How many times?”
Elena could not answer.
Valeria looked at the seven photographs.
“How many times?”
“Since you were twelve.”
Evelyn, standing near the bed, closed her eyes briefly.
Bell’s voice became firm.
“Mrs. Mercer, explain the clinic.”
Elena wiped her face.
“Daniel worked for Novagen before the company had that name. It was a private research group called Meridian Reproductive Systems. They studied inherited diseases, fertility treatments and fetal development.”
“And children?” Bell asked.
Elena nodded.
“They created embryos for research.”
Valeria stared at her mother.
“Created?”
“Some were implanted. Some were stored. Some were transferred to families.”
“You bought me.”
“No.”
“Did you pay them?”
Elena’s silence answered.
“How much?”
“Daniel handled the money.”
Valeria laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“You bought a baby and spent seventeen years calling her a liar.”
“I loved you.”
“You drugged me.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“They told us that if we refused the follow-up evaluations, they would take you away.”
“Who told you?”
“Grant Holloway.”
Bell made another note.
“Was Holloway part of Meridian?”
“He funded it.”
“What were the follow-up evaluations?”
“At first, blood tests. Memory tests. Scans.”
“And later?”
Elena’s hands shook.
“When Valeria was fifteen, the doctors said she had developed differently from the others.”
“The other girls?” Bell asked.
“I never met them.”
“You knew they existed.”
“I knew there had been multiple births from the same genetic line.”
Valeria stared at the photographs.
“Are we clones?”
Elena flinched.
“I don’t know.”
“Then what are we?”
“They called you iterations.”
The room fell silent.
Valeria looked at her mother as if she had become a stranger.
“What happened at the lake house?”
Elena squeezed her eyes shut.
“They said Valeria needed a procedure.”
“What procedure?”
“They claimed it involved ovarian tissue collection.”
Valeria’s voice barely emerged.
“I was pregnant.”
Elena’s eyes opened.
“I didn’t know until later.”
“Pregnant with whose baby?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is a lie.”
“I swear.”
“You always swear after you get caught.”
Elena reached toward her.
Valeria pulled back.
Bell stepped between them.
“Mrs. Mercer, how did the pregnancy end?”
Elena covered her face.
“They induced it.”
“Why was tissue left untreated?”
“They were supposed to monitor her.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Miriam Vale.”
Valeria remembered the red-haired woman.
“The woman with the silver necklace.”
Elena nodded.
Bell’s phone rang again.
He listened for less than a minute.
“What do you mean, missing?” he asked.
Valeria watched his expression tighten.
“Lock down the evidence room.”
He hung up and turned toward Simone.
“The phone is gone.”
Valeria’s heart dropped.
“My phone?”
Bell nodded.
A hospital evidence officer had signed it out fifteen minutes earlier.
The signature belonged to Dr. Hannah Cole.
But Dr. Cole had been in surgery the entire morning.
Someone had used her name.
Someone had walked into the hospital, taken the phone containing the evidence and disappeared.
Then Evelyn looked through the glass wall.
A person in medical scrubs stood at the end of the hallway.
Red hair.
A silver broken-circle pendant.
May you like
The woman smiled at Valeria.
Then the lights went out.
