Chapter 12 - My Father Was Alive
Hale refused to say another word without an attorney.
The clinic was sealed.
Computers were seized.
Employees were interviewed.
Ryan disappeared.
His phone went dead before investigators could locate him.
Vanessa remained in custody for questioning.
I should have felt safer.
I didn’t.
Dr. Hale’s final words followed me everywhere.
Your father switched M-17 himself.
That evening, Naomi recovered one video from the flash drive we had missed.
The file had been programmed to remain invisible until the Hale server was accessed.
My father appeared on the screen.
The date shocked me.
Two weeks earlier.
He was alive.
Not eleven months ago.
Not six months ago.
Two weeks ago.
I gripped the table.
“Dad.”
Robert looked older.
His beard had gone gray.
There were dark circles beneath his eyes.
But it was him.
“Claire, by now you know I survived.”
“I’m sorry I allowed you to believe otherwise.”
“I entered federal protective custody because the case reached people far beyond Hale.”
I began crying.
I didn’t care who saw.
“I wanted to call you every day.”
“But Ryan was monitoring you.”
“If I contacted you directly, I believed he would use you to find me.”
My hands curled into fists.
Ryan again.
Always Ryan.
Dad continued.
“There is something Dr. Hale may tell you.”
“He may claim I switched M-17.”
“That part is true.”
Luka leaned closer to the screen.
I stopped breathing.
“I discovered the plan three weeks before your procedure.”
“Hale intended to substitute Luka Moretti’s genetic material for Ryan’s.”
“My daughter was going to become collateral in an extortion scheme.”
“So I changed the chain of custody.”
I covered my mouth.
“What did you use?”
Dad seemed almost to answer me through the screen.
“I will not identify the substitute sample in this recording.”
“Digital evidence can be stolen.”
“The truth exists in two sealed DNA packages.”
“One belongs to Grace.”
“The other belongs to the man whose sample I actually used.”
I stared at Luka.
His expression was unreadable.
Dad continued.
“If you are hearing this, find Daniel Mercer.”
Naomi immediately started typing.
Dad’s final words made Luka straighten.
“Daniel has the final envelope.”
“And he is the only man Ryan has feared since this began.”
The recording ended.
Naomi found Daniel Mercer in less than a minute.
Former federal prosecutor.
Former financial crimes investigator.
Current private attorney.
His address appeared on the screen.
Luka recognized the name.
“I know him.”
“How?”
“He investigated my family twelve years ago.”
I almost laughed from exhaustion.
“Of course he did.”
Then Naomi found another connection.
Daniel Mercer had represented Ryan in a sealed criminal investigation eight years earlier.
Before Ryan met me.
Before we married.
Before Hale Fertility.
May you like
Whatever Ryan had done back then had been serious enough to terrify him years later.
And Daniel Mercer knew exactly what it was.
