Chapter 8 - My Husband Disappeared Before Sunrise
The call ended.
Daniel called back.
Disconnected.
We contacted police.
This time we told them more.
Not everything.
Enough.
Emily's apartment was empty.
Her car remained outside.
There was no sign of forced entry.
We returned home after midnight under police advice and changed every lock.
Lily slept in the nursery.
I couldn't.
Daniel sat at the kitchen table.
For the first time since morning, we were alone.
“Is Emily carrying our embryo?” I asked.
“I don't know.”
“Could she be?”
“Yes.”
The word almost broke me.
Our IVF cycle had produced five viable embryos.
One became the daughter inside me.
Four remained frozen.
Or I thought they did.
“If somebody transferred one to Emily, why?”
“I don't know.”
“Stop saying that.”
He looked exhausted.
“So should I invent an answer?”
“No.”
Silence.
Then I asked the question I had avoided.
“Why was she wearing a robe?”
Daniel explained.
Emily had arrived soaked after spilling coffee over herself in the car.
He offered her one of my old robes while her clothes were rinsed.
She became dizzy.
He helped her onto the bed.
His shirt got wet.
He removed it.
Ridiculous.
Completely plausible.
Exactly the kind of explanation that sounds fabricated because reality has bad timing.
“Why were your pants undone?”
“I had just changed out of sweatpants when you walked in.”
I almost laughed.
“So the affair-looking scene was actually the least important lie today.”
“Yes.”
For the first time, Daniel smiled faintly.
It disappeared quickly.
“Claire, I am sorry.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
I looked at him.
“I don't know if I can forgive you.”
“I know.”
“But I need you right now.”
“I know.”
“Don't mistake those two things.”
“I won't.”
At four in the morning, I finally slept.
At six, I woke because Daniel was gone.
His phone remained on the nightstand.
There was blood on the back door.
Not much.
Three drops.
Then more on the porch.
I called police.
Lily came downstairs.
“Where's Daniel?”
“I don't know.”
A security camera showed him leaving at 5:18 a.m.
Alone.
He walked toward a dark SUV parked down the street.
He got inside voluntarily.
The SUV drove away.
Then I found a note beneath his phone.
Claire,
I know where Emily is.
Do not follow me.
Trust me once more.
D.
I nearly tore it apart.
Instead I turned it over.
An address.
Vale Research Annex.
Abandoned twelve years ago.
Thomas arrived twenty minutes later.
I showed him.
He cursed.
“You aren't going.”
I stared at him.
“Apparently the men in my life learn slowly.”
Lily said, “I'm coming.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you're seventeen.”
“And this started because of me.”
“That doesn't make it your responsibility.”
Her face changed.
Nobody had told her that before.
I touched her shoulder.
“You stay with June.”
She reluctantly agreed.
Thomas drove.
The research annex stood behind chain-link fencing.
The front entrance had been boarded.
Daniel's car was nowhere.
Inside, dust covered the corridors.
But fresh footprints marked the floor.
We followed them downstairs.
A light glowed beneath a laboratory door.
Thomas whispered, “Stay behind me.”
He opened it.
Emily sat in a chair.
Alive.
Unhurt.
Daniel stood beside her.
So did Adrian Cole.
“What the hell is this?” I demanded.
Daniel rushed toward me.
“You weren't supposed to come.”
“I'm developing a dislike for that sentence.”
Emily hugged me.
Then she placed my hand on her stomach.
“I know.”
“Know what?”
“Whose embryo this is.”
Cole handed me a laboratory report.
Embryo identification.
My name.
Daniel's name.
Transfer recipient: Emily Carter.
My legs weakened.
“Our baby?”
Emily nodded through tears.
“I didn't know. I used a donor embryo. At least that's what the clinic told me.”
Daniel caught me as I sat.
Two daughters.
One growing inside me.
Another embryo growing inside Emily.
“How?”
Cole explained that Hargrove had transferred genetic material connected to Project Haven.
“Why Emily?”
“Her mother.”
Ruth.
Of course.
Ruth had helped save Lily.
Her daughter had been drawn into the same experiment.
“But why?”
Cole looked at my stomach.
“To compare outcomes.”
Rage replaced shock.
“Our children are not experiments.”
“No.”
“Who did this?”
Cole looked toward a glass office.
“The person continuing Richard's work.”
“Who?”
Before he answered, every light in the building went out.
A red emergency lamp flickered on.
A speaker crackled overhead.
Then a familiar voice filled the laboratory.
“Claire, you were always as stubborn as your mother.”
I knew that voice.
I had heard it every Christmas of my childhood.
Thomas whispered one word.
“No.”
May you like
Footsteps approached from the dark corridor.
And my father walked into the light...
