Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN GENE VIEVE HID FROM HER HUSBAND
Elena was moved into a guarded guest room.
Lawson told himself it was for her protection.
She called it imprisonment.
“You lock every problem behind a door,” she told him.
“I keep people alive.”
“Is that what you did with Genevieve?”
The question landed too accurately.
Lawson had protected his wife with drivers, guards, armored cars, and schedules.
Genevieve had hated all of it.
She used to tell him there was a difference between safety and permission.
He had never understood.
Now Elena sat across from him with Genevieve’s necklace around her neck.
“How close were you?”
Elena looked down.
“She saved my life.”
“How?”
“My mother died when I was twenty. I lost my apartment. My lab job barely paid enough to eat. Genevieve found me sleeping in my car behind St. Vincent.”
Lawson listened.
“She gave me money?”
“No.”
That surprised him.
“She gave me work.”
Doing what?”
“Helping her investigate the research program.”
Genevieve had discovered samples were being removed from the hospital database.
Some belonged to wealthy families.
Some belonged to children.
The samples appeared in private genetic studies funded through anonymous corporations.
Elena found one corporation linked to Mercer Biomedical.
Lawson’s stomach tightened.
“Who controlled the study?”
“Officially? Dr. Yates.”
“And unofficially?”
Elena looked at him.
“Your father.”
Conrad Mercer.
Dead for five years.
Lawson remembered a man who believed weakness was merely information other people had not yet weaponized.
“He wanted genetic profiles of his descendants?”
“Not only his descendants.”
“Then what?”
“Potential donors.”
Lawson stared.
Elena explained that Conrad had been terrified of blood cancers because Lawson’s grandmother died from one.
He built a private archive searching for highly compatible donors among employees, distant relatives, and participants in charitable medical programs.
“That’s illegal.”
“So were a lot of things your father did.”
Lawson didn’t defend him.
“What did Genevieve find?”
“She found one perfect match connected to your family.”
“For me?”
“For your future children.”
“How could anyone know that?”
“They couldn’t know. Only estimate.”
“Who was it?”
Elena looked frustrated.
“I told you. Genevieve kept the identity separate.”
“Why?”
“Because the donor was a child.”
Lawson froze.
“A child?”
“At the time.”
He stood.
“Whose child?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena pulled out Genevieve’s necklace.
“The blue stone opens.”
Lawson stared.
He had owned that necklace before Genevieve.
Had touched it hundreds of times.
Elena pressed the stone sideways.
A tiny compartment opened.
Inside was a strip of microfilm.
Prescott immediately called technical staff.
The image was enlarged.
A birth certificate appeared.
Lawson read the mother’s name first.
Then the father’s.
His face emptied.
The child was born nineteen years earlier.
Mother: Claire Ward.
Father: Conrad Mercer.
Lawson looked at Elena.
Claire Ward had been Elena’s mother.
May you like
Which meant Elena was not merely Genevieve’s friend.
She was Lawson’s aunt.
