Chapter 8 - THE BROTHER IN THE WALLS
Police surrounded the house before dawn.
Grant demanded to speak only to me.
Detective Ortiz refused.
Grant responded by sending a live video.
Evelyn sat inside the dining room where our family had celebrated birthdays and Christmas dinners.
Her hair had turned almost completely gray.
Burn scars covered the left side of her face.
Her wrists were bound.
A device with blinking lights rested beneath her chair.
Grant stood behind her.
“Come home, Nora,” he said into the camera.
“Or your sister dies for real this time.”
The tactical commander believed the device might be a bomb.
Snipers could not obtain a clear shot.
The windows had been covered.
The house plans showed no safe entry route.
I knew something the plans did not.
Three years earlier, Lily had lost a toy behind a panel in Grant’s office.
When I removed the panel, I discovered a narrow space between the walls.
Grant said it was an unfinished ventilation shaft.
Now I understood why he had reacted so angrily and sealed it himself.
There were hidden passages inside the house.
Helen confirmed that Richard designed several Mercer properties with escape corridors and surveillance rooms.
The passage likely connected to an old storm drain behind the neighborhood.
Elias and an agent entered through the drain while I kept Grant talking by phone.
“Why did you marry me?” I asked.
“To keep Evelyn’s evidence close.”
“You could have killed me.”
“I tried.”
The words landed softly.
More terrifying because of how casually he said them.
“The car accident during our honeymoon,” he continued.
“The gas leak when Lily was two. The medication your doctor prescribed after the fire.”
Memories flashed through my mind.
The brakes failing on a mountain road.
The furnace malfunction.
The pills that made me sleep sixteen hours a day.
Grant had repeatedly tried to kill me.
“Why did you stop?”
“Because you kept surviving.”
He laughed.
“And because Lily became useful.”
“She loved you.”
“She was trained to.”
I nearly lost control.
Instead, I kept him speaking.
“What did my sister discover?”
“The network was only the beginning.”
Grant explained that Richard collected genetic information from infants and parents for decades.
Wealthy clients did not merely want children.
They wanted children selected for specific traits.
Health.
Intelligence.
Appearance.
Grant expanded the program through fertility clinics.
Embryos were swapped.
Surrogates were deceived.
Children were assigned to buyers before birth.
I had not conceived naturally as I believed.
During a fertility procedure before Lily’s birth, Grant arranged for an embryo connected to Caroline Vale to be implanted.
But something went wrong.
I became pregnant with my own genetic child instead.
“Then why was Lily at the hospital?”
“Caroline delivered the product we had promised.”
Product.
He called my daughter a product.
“Rose was supposed to disappear,” Grant said.
“Evelyn ruined everything by switching them.”
A faint tapping sounded through the phone.
Three taps.
Pause.
Two taps.
Evelyn and I had used that signal as children.
It meant behind you.
I looked at the live video.
A shadow moved behind Grant.
Elias had entered the dining room wall.
Grant noticed my expression.
He turned.
Elias burst through the panel.
Evelyn threw herself sideways.
Agents breached the doors.
Grant grabbed a detonator.
I heard a shot.
The video went dark.
Seconds passed.
Then Detective Ortiz’s radio crackled.
“Hostage secure.”
Grant had been struck in the shoulder but remained alive.
The explosive device was fake.
I entered the house after the bomb squad cleared it.
Evelyn stood in the foyer.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
I saw the sister I remembered beneath the scars.
She saw the girl she had tried to save.
We crossed the distance and held each other.
Her body trembled.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You saved both girls.”
“No.”
She pulled back.
Terror filled her eyes.
“There were three babies that night.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“You delivered twins, Nora.”
My knees nearly gave way.
“Rose had a brother.”
Grant began laughing from the floor where agents restrained him.
Evelyn turned toward him.
“Where is the boy?”
Grant’s smile widened.
“You have been living inside his house.”
Police searched the hidden passages.
Behind the wall of Lily’s bedroom, they found a small sleeping area.
Blankets.
Food wrappers.
Books.
Photographs of me.
Someone had lived there recently.
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On the wall, written in a child’s handwriting, were five words:
MOM, PLEASE DON’T TRUST GRANDPA.
