CHAPTER 16 — THE THIRD WRISTBAND
The clock above the clinic door read 2:13 p.m.
Emily stared at Lydia’s final message until the screen went dark.
Choose which child inherits, or all three disappear.
Her newborn shifted against her chest.
The baby was warm, breathing, alive.
For several seconds, that was the only truth Emily allowed herself to trust.
Grant rushed back into the delivery room.
“The underground exits have been sealed.”
“Preston escaped,” Emily said.
“Someone released him before we reached the nursery.”
“Nicholas?”
Grant glanced toward the man with Nathan’s face standing near the damaged door.
“He was with me.”
The man stepped forward.
“I heard the baby crying through the ventilation system. Lydia must have used the service tunnels.”
Emily looked down at her child’s face.
“Then find her.”
“We will.”
“No.” Emily’s voice hardened. “You will find all of them. Lydia, my father, Preston, and the other two children.”
Claire groaned from the floor.
Emily immediately leaned toward her.
“Claire?”
Grant helped Claire sit up.
A bruise was forming near her temple, but her eyes remained alert.
“The baby,” Claire whispered.
“She’s safe.”
Claire looked at the newborn and released a shaky breath.
Then her expression changed.
“The wristband.”
Emily looked at the small plastic identification band around the baby’s ankle.
The printed code read:
NB-03.
Emily’s stomach tightened.
“What does that mean?”
Claire reached beneath her scrub sleeve and removed another band.
NB-01.
“I took this from the first infant Lydia brought into the clinic.”
“The false infant?”
Claire shook her head.
“I don’t think that baby was false.”
Everyone went silent.
Claire placed the band on the bed.
“Lydia wanted us to believe it had been brought here merely to create a fraudulent birth record. But NB-01 wasn’t printed today. The plastic is several weeks old.”
Grant examined it.
“So that child was born before Emily’s baby.”
“Yes.”
Emily remembered Lydia standing in the video, holding the infant while another baby slept in the crib behind her.
“Then the third baby must be NB-02.”
Claire looked at the newborn in Emily’s arms.
“No. Your baby was originally wearing NB-02.”
Emily’s blood went cold.
“What?”
“When the lights failed, someone entered the delivery room. Before I was struck, I saw a nurse reach for the baby. I switched the bands before she could take her.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew they were identifying the children by number.”
Emily stared at the NB-03 band.
“Then which number is my baby?”
Claire’s eyes filled with guilt.
“I don’t know.”
A monitor near the wall flickered.
Static crossed the screen.
Then a security camera feed appeared.
The clinic’s front corridor was empty except for two unconscious guards.
A man entered through the emergency doors.
He wore a torn dark coat and carried an infant wrapped in a gray blanket.
Emily stopped breathing.
The man had Nathan’s face.
But the man already standing beside Grant had the same face.
The newcomer looked directly at the security camera.
“Emily,” he said.
His voice came through the speakers.
“Do not trust the man standing beside you.”
The man inside the delivery room stepped toward the monitor.
The newcomer lifted the infant slightly.
“I have the child Lydia left behind.”
Emily’s eyes moved between the two identical faces.
May you like
The man on the screen continued.
“And I am Nathan Bennett.”
