CHAPTER 8 — THE VOICE BEHIND THE DOOR
The man outside the hospital room spoke again.
“Emily, open the door.”
It was Charles Bennett’s voice.
The same controlled tone.
The same slight roughness at the end of each sentence.
Emily stared at the message on her phone.
Do not believe Claire. She watched Nathan die.
Claire tightened her grip on Emily’s arm.
“That man is not your father.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Charles never calls you Emily when he is frightened.”
Emily’s heart pounded.
Her father had always called her sweetheart when he thought she was in danger.
Detective Grant raised his weapon and moved toward the door.
“Everyone get behind the bed.”
The handle turned again.
Then a metal object slid beneath the door.
A small speaker.
Charles’s voice came from it.
“Please, sweetheart. Open the door.”
Emily’s blood turned cold.
The man outside had corrected his mistake.
“He can hear us,” Claire whispered.
Grant fired once through the lock.
The hallway fell silent.
Then something struck the door from the other side.
The frame cracked.
Nathan’s voice came from the dark stairwell.
“Grant, move!”
A second shot came through the door.
Grant pulled Emily down behind the bed as the bullet shattered a lamp.
Claire crawled toward the bathroom.
“There is a service passage behind the shower wall.”
“How do you know?” Emily demanded.
Claire did not answer.
She pressed a hidden latch beneath the sink.
A narrow panel opened.
Cold air rushed from the darkness.
Grant pushed Emily inside first.
Nathan appeared through the stairwell door and joined them seconds before the hospital-room door burst open.
The hidden passage was barely wide enough for one person.
Emergency lights flashed red along the floor.
Emily moved slowly, one hand against the wall and the other protecting her stomach.
Behind them, footsteps entered the room.
A man’s voice spoke through the passage.
“You cannot hide the child forever.”
It was no longer Charles’s voice.
Emily recognized the real speaker.
Dr. Samuel Ward.
The missing physician who had signed her father’s false death certificate.
Claire stopped walking.
“He found us.”
Nathan looked at her.
“You knew he was alive?”
“I knew Charles paid him to disappear.”
Emily turned.
“My father paid him?”
Claire looked ashamed.
“Charles ordered the first death certificate.”
Emily felt as if the narrow walls were closing around her.
“You said Preston moved my father.”
“He did.”
“But my father planned his own death?”
“Only part of it.”
A shot echoed behind them.
Grant pushed everyone forward.
The passage ended at a steel door opening into an unused operating wing.
Dust covered the floor.
Old medical equipment stood beneath white sheets.
Emily stepped into the room.
A projector suddenly turned on.
Light filled the opposite wall.
A video began playing.
It showed Emily lying unconscious inside the fertility clinic nine months earlier.
Preston stood beside the operating table.
Vanessa was near the embryo storage unit.
Dr. Ward entered the frame carrying a sealed container.
Then Charles Bennett appeared.
Emily stopped breathing.
Her father stood beside her unconscious body.
On the recording, Preston asked, “Which embryo are we using?”
Charles looked toward the camera.
“Specimen B.”
Vanessa hesitated.
“Emily never approved this.”
Charles’s reply was cold.
“She does not need to know.”
The video ended.
Emily stared at the blank wall.
Her father had not merely discovered the embryo exchange.
He had ordered it.
A slow clap came from the doorway.
Dr. Ward stood there holding a gun in one hand and a syringe in the other.
“You finally saw the truth,” he said.
May you like
He pointed the syringe toward Emily’s stomach.
“Now we need to make sure Charles Bennett’s final experiment is never born.”
