Chapter 9 - SEVENTY-TWO HOURS
Sienna was still in the parking garage when I caught up with her.
Rebecca had left through another exit with her notes.
Eli was strapped into his car seat.
Sienna stood beside the open rear door searching through the diaper bag.
"Why did you move CM-JM-04?"
She spun around.
Her face went blank.
"What?"
"Seventy-two hours ago."
"You authorized release from Northshore."
"I did no such thing."
"Your electronic signature is on the request."
Sienna stared at me.
For once, her shock looked real.
"I didn't."
"You witnessed a forged consent with my name on it."
"You admitted you knew CM-JM-03 came from my cycle."
"Why should I believe you now?"
She slammed the diaper bag onto the seat.
"Because if I had access to another one of your embryos, I would not be standing in a parking garage waiting for a judge to decide whether you get to see my son."
I hated the phrase my son.
I hated that I also understood why she said it.
"Where would you be?"
"Gone."
The answer was immediate.
I stared at her.
She looked toward Eli through the car window.
"Do you think I don't know what is coming?"
"The DNA report is going to say what everyone already knows."
"Julian is turning on me."
"Evelyn will turn on me the second I stop being useful."
"The foundation suspended me."
"And half the city thinks I stole a baby."
"Did you?"
Her eyes filled with anger.
"I carried him."
"That is not an answer."
"I was told you had signed away the embryos."
"You knew the embryo was mine."
"Yes."
"Did you ever ask me?"
Silence.
"One phone call," I said.
"One question."
"Clara, did you really give up your embryo?"
"You slept in my guest room."
"You knew my number."
"You knew where I worked."
"You did not ask because you did not want the answer."
Sienna looked away.
That was the closest she had come to admitting the moral truth.
Her phone rang.
She checked the screen and immediately declined the call.
I saw the name before it disappeared.
Evelyn.
"Answer it."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because she has been calling all day telling me not to talk to you."
"About CM-JM-04?"
Sienna's face changed.
"She asked if anyone mentioned it."
My pulse accelerated.
"When?"
"This morning."
"What did you say?"
"I said you already knew."
"Then she called me stupid."
Sienna gave a bitter laugh.
"That is how Evelyn sounds when she is terrified."
I called Maya.
Within ten minutes, she had the Connecticut clinic's name and was on the phone with its legal department.
The embryo shipment was scheduled to arrive at 3:40 p.m.
The clinic initially refused to discuss anything.
Maya emailed the preservation order.
They called back four minutes later.
The shipment would be quarantined upon arrival.
No transfer or thaw would occur.
I should have felt relieved.
I did not.
Too many people had already ignored rules for money.
Maya met me at the clinic with a court marshal and a reproductive-law specialist.
Julian arrived separately.
He did not try to speak to me.
At 3:47, a white medical courier van pulled into the secured receiving bay.
We watched through glass as two employees carried a metal cryogenic shipping container inside.
A clinic director signed the custody log.
The court marshal served the order.
Everyone waited while the container was moved into a secure laboratory.
Dr. Vance joined by video.
He instructed the receiving embryologist to verify the outer seal, barcode, and internal canister identifier without opening the specimen straw.
The seal number matched the manifest.
The canister number did not.
I felt Maya straighten beside me.
"What does that mean?"
The embryologist frowned at the screen.
"The manifest lists canister C4-221."
"The container holds canister B7-903."
Julian swore under his breath.
"Is it our embryo?"
"I cannot tell without tracing the internal barcode."
She scanned it.
The screen loaded.
Then she looked up.
"This is not CM-JM-04."
My stomach dropped.
"What is it?"
"It belongs to another patient."
The room erupted into questions.
Maya raised her voice.
"Nobody moves anything."
"Lock down the receiving logs."
The clinic director was already calling security.
I stared at the cryogenic container behind the glass.
Somewhere, another family had no idea their embryo had just arrived under my name.
Somewhere, mine had been swapped out.
Julian turned toward Daniel Frost.
"Find my mother."
Daniel looked at him.
"I am your lawyer, not your investigator."
"Then hire one."
"I want to know where she is."
My phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number.
There was no text.
Only a photograph.
It showed a silver cryogenic transport case sitting on the back seat of a car.
A woman's gloved hand rested on top.
On her wrist was a gold bracelet with three square emeralds.
I knew that bracelet.
I had given it to Sienna for her thirtieth birthday.
I turned toward her.
She was standing twenty feet away beside Rebecca, who had accompanied Eli during the confusion.
The bracelet was not on her wrist.
"Where is the bracelet I gave you?"
Sienna stared at me.
"What?"
"The emerald bracelet."
Her face went pale.
"I haven't had it in months."
"Who does?"
She swallowed.
"Evelyn."
Julian looked at her.
"Why would my mother have your bracelet?"
"Because she took it from me the night Eli was born."
Nobody spoke.
Sienna wrapped her arms around herself.
"She said I had no right to wear something Clara gave me while I was holding Clara's child."
The sentence hit all of us at once.
Julian stepped toward her.
"She said that?"
Sienna nodded slowly.
"That exact sentence."
My phone vibrated again.
Another anonymous message appeared.
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO STOP DIGGING.
Then a second line appeared beneath it.
YOU ALREADY GOT ONE CHILD BACK.
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THE FILE THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
