Chapter 4 - BLACKBIRD
Nobody would tell me what the embryo program was.
That made me angrier than the truth probably could have.
The state investigators sealed the storage unit.
Lena filed emergency motions for access to all Beacon records connected to my treatment.
Julian’s attorneys filed objections within hours.
And Garrison?
Garrison disappeared.
For almost two days.
His farmhouse stayed dark.
Ranger was gone.
His truck was gone.
His phone went straight to voicemail.
By the second evening, I stopped feeling abandoned and started feeling furious.
He had dragged an eight-year-old investigation into my life.
He had shown me Julian’s medical report.
He had stood beside me while my entire marriage collapsed.
Then the second someone called him Blackbird, he vanished.
At 10:30 that night, headlights swept across the guest cottage windows.
I stepped outside before he could knock.
Garrison looked exhausted.
There was dried blood on his shirt cuff.
“Whose blood is that?”
“Not mine.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“I had to meet someone.”
“You had to disappear.”
“I was trying to keep you out of something.”
I laughed.
“That stopped being an option around the time investigators found my name inside an illegal storage unit.”
He looked toward the road.
“Inside.”
“No.”
“Please.”
That word surprised me.
Garrison did not seem like a man who used it often.
I let him in.
He placed a thick file on the table.
BLACKBIRD TASK FORCE.
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“You may hate me afterward.”
“I already considered it.”
For the first time, he almost smiled.
Then it vanished.
“Twelve years ago, I was county sheriff. But I was also cross-designated with a federal healthcare fraud task force.”
“So Blackbird was a code name.”
“Yes.”
“For you?”
“For the investigation.”
I waited.
Garrison opened the file.
“Beacon Fertility had wealthy clients whose families depended on bloodline-based trusts. In several cases, a male heir was infertile.”
My skin prickled.
“Like Julian.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“They paid for solutions.”
“What kind of solutions?”
“Falsified lab results. Hidden donor use. Fraudulent paternity documentation.”
I felt sick.
“And embryos?”
His eyes darkened.
“Sometimes embryos were created using material patients did not knowingly authorize for those specific procedures.”
I stood so fast the chair scraped backward.
“Are you telling me they stole my eggs?”
“I’m telling you the evidence was never complete enough to prove what happened.”
“You found a list with my name.”
“Years after the original investigation.”
“What does B-17 mean?”
Garrison exhaled.
“Beacon’s internal terminology suggested B-series samples were biological material held outside normal patient files.”
“For what?”
“We never knew.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“You knew enough to keep a copy of Julian’s report.”
His expression hardened.
“Because Julian’s father paid a Beacon administrator to erase his son’s infertility diagnosis.”
That stopped me.
“Julian’s father?”
“Richard Mercer.”
I knew Richard only as the severe man in framed family photographs.
He had died before Julian and I married.
Garrison opened another folder.
“Richard was part of the original investigation.”
“For fertility fraud?”
“For much more.”
Money laundering.
Insurance fraud.
Medical kickbacks.
Estate manipulation.
Bribery.
The list filled an entire page.
“Why wasn’t he charged?”
“He died before we finished the case.”
“And Julian?”
“Too young to be central to the operation.”
“But he knew.”
“I believe he learned enough afterward to continue parts of it.”
My head was pounding.
Then I saw a photograph clipped to the file.
A younger Garrison stood beside a woman with dark hair.
She was smiling.
“Elise?”
His face changed.
“My wife.”
“What does she have to do with this?”
He hesitated.
“She worked at Beacon.”
I sat down again.
“She was a nurse?”
“Embryology lab coordinator.”
Every piece of the room seemed to shift.
“You said she spent years being blamed for infertility.”
“She did.”
“But she worked at the clinic investigating infertility?”
“Yes.”
“And she found out?”
“Eventually.”
His voice became rough.
“Elise discovered they had altered her own records too.”
I did not know what to say.
Garrison stared at the photograph.
“She came to me with copies. That’s how the investigation started.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died before the task force could make arrests.”
I felt the air leave my lungs.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“Was it an accident?”
He met my eyes.
“I spent twelve years asking that question.”
Silence filled the kitchen.
Then Garrison pushed one last photograph toward me.
It showed Richard Mercer leaving a private clinic entrance.
Beside him stood another man.
Dr. Halpern.
And between them was a young Julian.
Maybe nineteen.
Maybe twenty.
Old enough to understand.
On the back, Elise had written three words.
HE KNOWS EVERYTHING.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Then a woman whispered:
“Stop trusting Blackwood.”
The line went dead.
A message arrived immediately afterward.
One photograph.
Taken through the window of the cottage.
It showed Garrison and me sitting at the kitchen table.
May you like
The timestamp was from thirty seconds earlier.
Someone was outside.
