Chapter 5 - THE SECRET IN THEIR BLOOD
We escaped through a tunnel beneath the house.
The passage led to an old garage nearly half a mile away.
Federal agents arrived minutes later.
Nobody was injured.
But the message was clear.
Someone was desperate enough to attack a secure location.
Back at the federal facility, the investigators revealed what my father had discovered.
Years earlier, my father had invested in a medical research company.
The company developed a genetic technology capable of identifying inherited diseases and certain rare genetic markers.
The research had been stolen.
Someone had been using it illegally.
“What does that have to do with my children?” I asked.
The investigator placed a file in front of me.
“Your twins have a genetic marker that's extremely rare.”
I looked at Cassandra.
“What marker?”
“A hereditary mutation.”
“Disease?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
He hesitated.
“A biological identifier.”
I didn't understand.
He explained that the marker had once been used by a private research group to identify individuals carrying specific inherited genetic information.
My father had been involved in the original research.
So had Eleanor.
“So my children were tested?”
“Without your knowledge.”
“By whom?”
The answer came slowly.
“Your father's company.”
I stood.
“You tested my children?”
“No. Someone else did.”
Cassandra suddenly covered her face.
“I knew it.”
I looked at her.
“You knew?”
She nodded.
“After the twins were born, a doctor contacted me.”
“What doctor?”
“Dr. Aaron Bell.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“He told me the babies had been flagged.”
“For what?”
“He wouldn't say.”
“Then what did he tell you?”
“That if I ever brought them to a public hospital, someone would find them.”
I stared at her.
“And you believed him?”
“He showed me records.”
“Where are they?”
“Your father took them.”
I looked at Victor.
He nodded.
“Robert Hayes collected the files.”
“Why?”
“Because he knew what Eleanor was doing.”
Then everything clicked.
My father hadn't been hiding Cassandra because he wanted to separate us.
He had been hiding the children because someone wanted their genetic information.
But why?
The investigator opened another file.
“This is where it gets worse.”
Inside were documents from a research project called Little Star.
The project involved identifying children with the rare marker.
Twenty-three children had been identified.
Twenty-two were accounted for.
One was missing.
“Who?”
The investigator looked at me.
“Your father.”
I frowned.
“My father?”
“No.”
He turned the page.
“His first grandchild.”
My heart stopped.
“Luke?”
“No.”
“Violet?”
The investigator shook his head.
“Both.”
“Then who?”
He pointed to a photograph.
A young woman.
Cassandra stared at it.
“I know her.”
“Who is she?”
“My sister.”
I froze.
“You never told me you had a sister.”
“She disappeared before we met.”
“When?”
“Twenty years ago.”
The investigator nodded.
“Her name is Rebecca Hayes.”
I looked at Cassandra.
“How does she connect to the project?”
Cassandra whispered:
“She had the same genetic marker.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Victor walked into the room.
He was holding an old newspaper.
He placed it on the table.
The headline read:
LOCAL TEEN MISSING AFTER FAMILY DISPUTE.
The date was twenty years earlier.
The photograph was Rebecca.
My father's name appeared in the article.
So did Eleanor's.
I looked closer.
The article said Rebecca had been last seen leaving a family property.
There had never been an arrest.
Never a body.
Never an explanation.
Cassandra began crying.
“My father told me she ran away.”
The investigator looked at her.
“She didn't.”
“Then what happened?”
He opened another file.
Inside was a photograph from a surveillance camera.
Rebecca.
Alive.
Taken only three months earlier.
I stared.
“Where?”
The investigator answered:
“Denver.”
The same city I was flying to.
May you like
The same city where the $780 million deal was waiting.
And the same city where someone had apparently been waiting for me.
