Chapter 14 - Melissa’s Last Recording
Harrison did not run far.
He wanted me.
More specifically, he wanted the biological data Melissa had hidden.
Federal investigators finally reconstructed almost the entire recording from the phone found in Wade’s medical bag.
Melissa was conscious inside the blue room.
Wade was preparing her.
Brent was arguing.
Thomas was there.
Then Harrison entered.
Melissa said:
“You touch my daughter and everything goes public.”
Harrison answered:
“You misunderstand.”
Then came the sentence nobody had previously recovered.
“Sophie was never our final target.”
Melissa:
“My mother?”
Harrison laughed.
“Which one?”
My heart stopped.
Melissa knew about Rebecca before that night.
Then another voice appeared.
Female.
“Enough.”
I replayed it.
Rebecca went pale.
“That’s not me.”
It wasn’t Eleanor either.
Who?
Audio specialists enhanced the fragment.
Thomas listened.
His face changed.
“I know her.”
“Who?”
“My sister.”
Thomas had a younger sister named Caroline.
I had met her twice before she supposedly died in a house fire twenty-five years earlier.
Another dead person.
Another convenient certificate.
Caroline had been a biomedical researcher.
She had introduced Harrison to experimental immune therapies decades earlier.
Harrison was not the architect.
Caroline was.
Police searched old records.
She had changed her identity.
Dr. Caroline Bennett became Dr. Helen Cross.
Director of a prestigious private research institute.
Still practicing.
Still respected.
Still alive.
Harrison had spent decades taking the risk.
Caroline kept the legitimate face.
Melissa had uncovered her.
That was the darkest secret.
The third person at the clinic had not been a man at all.
Sophie’s “three men” clue referred to Brent, Wade and Thomas.
But there had been a fourth person.
Caroline.
She ordered the procedure altered.
She wanted my blood.
And Harrison’s escape?
Caroline arranged it.
Federal teams surrounded her institute.
Too late.
Empty.
One message waited on the main laboratory screen.
BRING DIANE.
Then my phone rang.
Harrison.
But Caroline spoke.
“Your daughter was remarkably stubborn.”
I gripped the phone.
“You’re going to prison.”
“Perhaps.”
“Where are you?”
“Sophie knows.”
I looked at my granddaughter.
She had gone pale.
“Nana…”
“What?”
She held up her stuffed rabbit.
Something inside was vibrating.
We cut open the second rabbit—the duplicate Harrison had sent.
Inside was a tracking device.
And a tiny speaker.
Caroline’s voice emerged from it.
“Hello, Sophie.”
Sophie screamed and dropped it.
Then Caroline said:
“Tell your grandmother to come to the chapel where all this started.”
A pause.
“And Diane?”
“Yes?”
“Bring Melissa.”
I stared at the speaker.
My daughter had been buried two weeks earlier.
“What does that mean?”
May you like
Caroline laughed softly.
“You never checked whether the woman in that coffin was still Melissa when you buried her.”
