CHAPTER 16 — THE BODY BY THE LAKE
Ethan reached Blackwood Lake twenty-seven minutes after Claire’s final message.
Rain cut across the windshield as his car sped down the narrow private road. Behind him, Agent Grant’s vehicles struggled to keep up.
The old Blackwood boathouse appeared through the trees, its broken windows glowing beneath a single yellow light.
Ethan stopped before the car had fully settled.
“Claire!”
His voice disappeared into the storm.
The live transmission had shown a body falling in front of the camera. One hand had been visible.
Two damaged fingers.
Daniel Blackwood’s injury.
But Ethan no longer trusted photographs, records or scars. Every fact in his life had been manufactured by someone else.
He followed a trail of blood toward the lake.
The camera Claire had used lay in the wet grass. A few feet beyond it, an older man was facedown beside the boathouse steps.
Ethan rolled him over.
The man’s face was almost identical to Patient D.
Almost.
A deep scar ran from his left temple to his jaw. His wet shirt was stained dark beneath the ribs.
The injured right hand confirmed what the video had shown.
“Daniel?” Ethan whispered.
The man’s eyes opened.
“Not anymore.”
Ethan leaned closer.
“Which brother are you?”
The man gave a weak smile.
“The names stopped mattering when your mother changed them.”
“Where is Claire?”
The man tried to raise one hand toward the lake.
“The tunnel.”
Then his head fell back.
Agent Grant arrived with paramedics. One of them checked the man’s pulse.
“He is alive, but barely.”
“Keep him alive,” Ethan ordered.
Grant examined the blood on the ground.
“There was more than one injured person.”
Vanessa’s scarf hung from a nail beside the boathouse door.
Inside, overturned chairs surrounded an old projector. Hundreds of photographs had been pinned across the walls.
Daniel and David as boys.
Margaret in a nurse’s uniform.
Helen holding an infant.
A young Marcus Vale standing beside an aircraft.
Ethan stopped before one photograph.
The pilot beside Daniel’s plane had Ethan’s eyes.
The name beneath the photograph had been scratched away.
Someone had recently written another name beside it.
THOMAS REED
“Noah’s father,” Ethan said.
Grant looked over his shoulder.
“The security director?”
“Noah said his family protected the real Claire.”
On the opposite wall, Ethan found a photograph of Helen Carter holding two newborn boys. One child wore a Blackwood identification band.
The other wore no band at all.
A sentence had been written below the image.
ONE CHILD WAS DANIEL’S HEIR. THE OTHER WAS HIS REPLACEMENT.
Ethan’s stomach tightened.
“Which child was me?”
A floorboard creaked behind him.
Margaret stood in the doorway, soaked by the rain.
Grant reached for his weapon.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Margaret ignored him.
She stared at the injured man being loaded into the ambulance.
“Did he tell you his name?”
“He said names stopped mattering.”
“Then he is still protecting the wrong brother.”
Ethan moved toward her.
“Who was Thomas Reed?”
Margaret’s face became guarded.
“A pilot who became greedy.”
“Was he my father?”
“He believed he was.”
“That is not an answer.”
Margaret walked to the wall of photographs.
“Thomas loved Helen. Helen loved Daniel. Daniel needed a son to secure the Blackwood succession. Every one of them believed they could use a child to control the future.”
“Was that child me?”
“One of them was.”
Margaret removed a framed map from the wall.
Behind it was a metal lever.
A section of the floor opened, revealing stone steps descending beneath the boathouse.
“The tunnel leads under the lake,” she said.
Grant ordered two agents forward.
Margaret stopped them.
“Claire went willingly because she remembered what is hidden at the other end.”
“What?”
“The room where Ethan Blackwood was born.”
Ethan entered the tunnel before Grant could stop him.
The passage smelled of damp stone and old fuel. Water dripped from the ceiling. Fresh footprints appeared in the mud.
Claire’s small shoe prints.
Vanessa’s heels.
A man’s heavy boots.
And another set belonging to someone walking barefoot.
Halfway through the tunnel, Ethan found a bloodstained piece of white cloth.
It had been torn from Claire’s maternity dress.
His phone vibrated.
A recording had been sent from Vanessa’s number.
Her voice was barely audible.
“Ethan, Claire is not with us anymore.”
He stopped.
The message continued.
“She remembered the crash, but she also remembered what Helen trained her to do afterward.”
A metallic sound echoed behind Vanessa.
“Claire has been protecting someone inside her mind for twenty years.”
“Vanessa?” Ethan shouted at the phone.
The recording ended with Vanessa whispering one final warning.
“When you find her, do not call her Claire.”
The tunnel opened into a concrete room beneath an abandoned lakeside hospital.
A woman stood beneath a surgical light.
Dark hair.
A scar near her eyebrow.
Her hands rested calmly over her pregnant stomach.
Ethan stepped toward her.
“Claire.”
The woman raised her eyes.
Her expression contained no recognition.
“My name is Evelyn,” she said.
Then she pointed toward a hospital bed behind him.
Vanessa lay unconscious on it.
May you like
Beside her was the missing newborn.
And standing over the child with a syringe was Noah Reed.
