Chapter 13 - The Woman Who Looked Exactly Like Laura
Daniel denied knowing Dr. Evelyn Shaw.
Emma believed he was telling the truth.
But she no longer considered Daniel’s ignorance comforting.
Federal investigators identified Evelyn Shaw within twenty-four hours.
Biochemist.
Clinical trial consultant.
Former research director for Voss Therapeutics.
Officially deceased.
Year of death: eighteen years ago.
Cause: laboratory fire.
No recoverable remains.
Emma laughed when Hayes told her.
“Of course.”
Hayes did not smile.
Evelyn Shaw’s employment records placed her in direct contact with Michael Carter and Thomas Miller.
She had designed distribution protocols for an experimental immune therapy.
The therapy never received final approval.
Yet shipment records showed thousands of doses manufactured.
Emma asked, “Where did they go?”
“We don’t know.”
“And Laura?”
Hayes opened another file.
“We compared photographs.”
The results were disturbing.
Laura’s face and Evelyn Shaw’s face shared features too precise for coincidence.
Mother and daughter was the most obvious explanation.
But no public record showed Evelyn having children.
Then DNA changed everything.
A baby tooth from Ethan had been stored in a keepsake box.
Emma volunteered it.
Investigators compared Ethan’s DNA to genetic material recovered from an archived medical sample attributed to Evelyn Shaw.
The relationship estimate came back.
Maternal grandmother.
Emma stared at the report.
“Laura was Evelyn’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“So Laura grew up knowing about this?”
“Possibly.”
Daniel sat beside her.
He looked devastated.
“She never told me.”
Emma turned toward him.
“Would you have listened?”
He closed his eyes.
“No.”
It was the first useful answer he had given her in days.
Agent Hayes continued.
“Evelyn Shaw disappeared after the laboratory fire. If she survived, she may have spent years hidden.”
“Like Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
“Like Laura.”
“Yes.”
Emma looked at Ethan playing through the glass wall of the family waiting room.
He was building a tower with Sophie.
His life had become a map of missing women.
Emma asked, “Why is Ethan important?”
Hayes hesitated.
“We don’t know that he is.”
“Martha hit my daughter because she took his food.”
“That could simply be her prejudice.”
“No.”
Emma shook her head.
“Martha has always treated Ethan differently. Better clothes. Better gifts. Private accounts. She once screamed at me because I wanted to change his pediatrician.”
Hayes’s expression shifted.
“Which pediatrician?”
“Dr. Alan Weiss.”
Hayes wrote the name.
Daniel suddenly looked up.
“Mom picked him.”
Emma stared at him.
“Of course she did.”
Dr. Weiss’s records showed he had previously worked for Voss Therapeutics.
Emma felt the room close around her.
Ethan had been monitored.
Not merely loved.
Monitored.
Hayes obtained warrants.
Medical records revealed unusual blood draws ordered twice a year under vague diagnostic codes.
Emma had signed consent forms believing they were routine panels.
Daniel had too.
The blood samples had been transferred to a research laboratory.
Hayes found the laboratory name.
Shaw Biomedical Research Foundation.
Emma whispered, “Shaw.”
The foundation had been created fifteen years ago.
Anonymous donors.
Private research.
No public clinical programs.
Hayes looked at Emma.
“We believe someone has been using Ethan’s blood for research.”
Daniel stood so quickly his chair fell.
“What?”
Emma grabbed his arm before he could move.
Not to comfort him.
To stop him from doing something useless.
“What kind of research?”
Hayes answered.
“We don’t know yet.”
That night, Ethan developed a fever.
Emma panicked.
The pediatrician on call said it was probably viral.
But Emma no longer trusted probably.
She took him to an independent hospital.
Blood tests were mostly normal.
Then the attending physician noticed something strange.
Ethan carried an uncommon immune marker.
The doctor described it as medically interesting.
Not dangerous.
But rare.
Emma asked how rare.
He hesitated.
“One in several million.”
Emma stared at Daniel.
Laura’s experimental immune therapy.
Evelyn Shaw’s research.
Ethan’s blood.
The stolen medications.
The missing women.
May you like
Suddenly Ethan was no longer merely a child caught inside the secret.
He might be the reason the secret had survived.
