Chapter 3 - The baby’s heartbeat
I did not remain for the search.
An ambulance took me to St. Catherine’s Medical Center.
The baby’s heart rate had become irregular.
Every financial secret in the world stopped mattering the moment a nurse said:
“We need to monitor her closely.”
Her.
My daughter.
Julian had called Chloe’s unborn baby “the real heir.”
He had never bothered to learn that ours was a girl until the shower invitation leaked it.
To him, inheritance mattered more than fatherhood.
I lay beneath fluorescent lights while monitors tracked each movement inside me.
Rachel sat beside the bed.
Harris appeared forty minutes later.
No federal jacket now.
Just a dark shirt and exhausted eyes.
“The baby?”
“Stable.”
He exhaled.
Then:
“Clara, what happened before we entered?”
I told him everything.
Chloe.
Beatrice’s announcement.
Julian shoving me.
Arthur applauding.
The words.
Real heir.
Harris wrote nothing while I spoke.
A recorder handled that.
Then he asked:
“Did Chloe actually say she was pregnant?”
I paused.
“No.”
“What?”
“Julian did.”
Rachel looked at me.
“So did Beatrice.”
But Chloe herself had never said the words.
Interesting.
Had I simply assumed?
Yes.
Because her hand repeatedly touched her abdomen.
Because everyone treated her pregnancy as established.
Because Julian told the room.
But no doctor had appeared.
No ultrasound.
No evidence.
Harris noticed my expression.
“We’ll come back to that.”
Then I asked:
“What was in the evidence bag?”
He hesitated.
“I can’t discuss everything yet.”
“Thomas?”
His face changed.
“You heard Arthur.”
“Yes.”
Harris sat.
“Thomas Vance was Arthur’s younger brother.”
I had known Arthur had a brother.
Dead before I married Julian.
Supposed suicide.
At least that was what the family said.
“Why would something be buried with him?”
Harris replied carefully.
“Because federal agents reopened Thomas’s death six months ago.”
My pulse changed.
“Why?”
“Someone sent us photographs.”
“Of what?”
“A grave being opened.”
I stared.
“Who opened it?”
“We don’t know.”
“And the object?”
Harris hesitated again.
“A data key.”
Not USB.
A physical encryption token used for older secure storage systems.
Found in a box recovered from beneath Thomas’s burial plot.
Arthur knew it existed.
Apparently believed it had been buried with his brother.
“What’s on it?”
“We haven’t decrypted it.”
Then Harris looked at me.
“But Arthur thinks it can destroy him.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
One message.
You think the FBI arrived because of you?
Another.
Ask Harris who contacted him first.
I looked up.
Harris had seen my face change.
“What?”
I showed him.
May you like
For the first time, the federal agent looked genuinely unsettled.
Because somebody watching the investigation knew he was in my hospital room.
