Chapter 8 - Two Ryans in One Hospital
The man outside Judge Wren's room wore Ryan's face, Ryan's tailored coat, and Ryan's wedding band from his marriage to Sofia.
He also had the scar through his left eyebrow.
Hospital security surrounded him, but he appeared relaxed. When Mariana entered the corridor with Elena and the restrained Ryan, the two brothers looked at each other for the first time in years.
Neither spoke.
The resemblance was nearly perfect. Adrian, or Gabriel, carried himself with looser confidence. Ryan stood rigid, as though every muscle had been trained to hide emotion.
The scarred brother smiled. "Still copying my posture, little brother?"
"You were born seven minutes after me," Ryan replied.
"That is the story she told you."
Elena separated them into different rooms. Fingerprints should have identified them, but the hospital database contained identical prints for both identities, an impossibility created by falsified records. DNA would take time.
Judge Wren insisted that Mariana enter alone.
He lay pale beneath a heated blanket, one shoulder bandaged. "I should have told you years ago," he said.
"Which brother married me?"
"Adrian. The one with the scar."
"Why did he call himself Gabriel?"
"Because Evelyn gave him many names. Adrian was the one he chose."
"Is he dangerous?"
Wren stared at the ceiling. "He was kind once. Then they kept him in the clinic for almost four years. When he escaped, he believed every person connected to Saint Orison deserved punishment."
"Did he kill Sofia?"
"I do not know."
"What happened to my memory?"
Wren told her the marriage had lasted nine days. Adrian and Mariana hid in a motel while preparing to release hospital records. Teresa found them first. She begged Mariana to return, claiming Adrian was unstable. Evelyn arrived with police and medical orders. Mariana was sedated, committed, and treated until the wedding disappeared from her mind.
"Teresa believed she was saving you," Wren said. "But she also feared what you would discover about your birth."
"Was I Evelyn's daughter?"
The judge's eyes closed.
"You were one of two girls born in adjacent rooms. One child belonged to Teresa. One belonged to Evelyn. The bracelets were changed twice. I signed an emergency guardianship without knowing which infant went where."
"So no one knows who I am?"
"Someone knows."
"Who?"
"Sofia knew before she died."
Mariana leaned closer. "How?"
"She found the original blood cards."
The door opened.
Dr. Vale entered wearing surgical scrubs.
Elena was not with him.
Wren's monitor began alarming.
Vale closed the door and locked it.
"You should have died at the house," he told the judge.
Mariana reached for the call button. Vale pulled the cord from the wall.
"Where is Detective Park?"
"Dealing with a fire alarm on another floor."
He removed a syringe from his pocket.
Wren tried to sit up. "Samuel, this ended years ago."
"It never ended. You simply became expensive to protect."
Mariana seized a metal tray and swung it. Vale blocked the blow, but the syringe fell. Wren kicked it beneath the bed. Vale struck Mariana across the mouth and reached for the ventilator tubing.
The window shattered inward.
A man came through from the maintenance ledge and tackled Vale to the floor.
The scar through his eyebrow flashed beneath the fluorescent light.
Adrian.
He drove Vale's wrist against the tile until the doctor released a hidden scalpel. Then he looked at Mariana.
"You still swing too early," he said.
A memory opened inside her like a door.
A motel room. Rain against the windows. Adrian laughing as he showed her how to hold a fireplace poker with both hands.
Mariana staggered.
"I remember your voice."
For the first time, Adrian's smile disappeared.
"That is enough for today."
He climbed back toward the broken window.
"Wait," she said. "Did you kill Sofia?"
He stopped on the ledge.
"No."
"Did Ryan?"
Adrian looked toward the corridor where his brother was being held.
"Ryan spent eight years believing Sofia was dead because Teresa asked him to."
Mariana felt the room tilt.
"What are you saying?"
Adrian stepped into the wind.
May you like
"Ask Teresa why there was never a body."
Then he disappeared along the ledge.
