Chapter 13 - THE THIRD BIRTHDAY
Thomas had taken no medication.
No coat.
No money.
Yet the residence cameras showed him walking through the service entrance with assistance.
The person beside him wore a nurse’s uniform and kept her face turned away.
Mercer enhanced the image.
Vanessa.
Margaret stared.
“Vanessa is in prison.”
“She was transferred for a medical evaluation yesterday.”
“Where?”
Mercer checked the order.
Sterling Neurological Institute.
Eleanor’s facility.
The prison transport van had arrived empty.
Vanessa and Thomas were both missing.
An hour later, Margaret received a call from Vanessa.
Her voice shook.
“I did not take him.”
“Then why are you with him?”
“Because he asked for me.”
Thomas spoke faintly in the background.
“Lily.”
Margaret tightened her grip on the phone.
“Where are you?”
Vanessa answered, “The clinic where Rachel died.”
The facility stood outside Albany, officially closed for renovation.
Margaret, Mercer, and Nathaniel arrived with a federal team. Daniel joined by phone from prison, refusing to be excluded.
They found Vanessa in an abandoned recovery room beside Thomas.
No guards.
No Eleanor.
Thomas had removed a file from a wall safe.
Inside were embryo records for three children created from Daniel’s genetic material.
Lily was the first successful birth.
A second embryo had been transferred to another carrier two years later.
A third remained frozen.
“The third birthday,” Margaret said.
Thomas nodded.
“Not birthday,” Vanessa whispered. “Birth date.”
The third embryo was scheduled for implantation on Lily’s seventh birthday.
If successful, another Hawthorne descendant would exist—one whose legal guardianship had already been assigned to Eleanor Sterling.
Nathaniel turned pages quickly.
“Who carried the second embryo?”
Vanessa pointed to a death certificate.
The carrier died during childbirth.
The infant survived.
A boy.
Current age: four.
Name: Samuel Cole.
Guardian: Eleanor Sterling.
Margaret looked at Lily’s nursery photograph.
The third carved child.
Not Nathaniel.
Samuel.
“Where is he?” Mercer asked.
Thomas shook his head.
“Moved.”
Vanessa said Eleanor kept Samuel hidden because Julian intended Lily to serve as the visible heir. Samuel was the replacement if Lily became uncontrollable.
“Does Lily know?” Margaret asked.
“No.”
“Good.”
Vanessa looked at her.
“You still think not knowing protects children.”
The accusation was deserved.
Margaret corrected herself.
“She will learn from us, not from someone using it against her.”
Daniel’s voice came through the phone.
“What does this make Samuel?”
“My son,” Vanessa said.
“And mine,” Daniel replied.
Silence followed.
Two people who had failed as spouses now shared two children created through crimes neither authorized.
Vanessa sat beside Thomas.
“Rachel found out before Samuel was born. She tried to take him. Eleanor stopped her.”
“How did Rachel die?” Mercer asked.
Vanessa’s eyes hardened.
“My mother killed her.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Slow applause.
Eleanor Sterling stood in the doorway with three armed security contractors.
“You always were dramatic, Vanessa.”
Vanessa rose.
“You left Rachel to die.”
“I preserved two children.”
“You preserved assets.”
Eleanor looked toward Margaret.
“Surely you understand.”
“No,” Margaret said. “I understand the sentence. I no longer accept the logic.”
Eleanor smiled.
“That transformation came late.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you expect it to erase what you built.”
“No. I expect it to determine what I do next.”
Mercer’s agents entered through the rear corridor.
Eleanor did not resist.
She raised both hands.
Too easily.
Mercer noticed.
“What have you done?”
Eleanor looked at Thomas.
“He has the wrong file.”
Thomas’s face changed.
The embryo records were copies.
The real activation order was elsewhere.
Lily’s guardian called Margaret.
The child was missing.
Her bedroom window stood open.
On the bed lay the stuffed fox.
Inside its torn seam was a tracking device.
It showed Lily moving east at sixty miles per hour.
May you like
Toward the Hawthorne employee-benefit trust headquarters.
And someone had used Margaret’s credentials to schedule an emergency board meeting for midnight.
