“It came from yours.”
Vale’s words hung in the ravine while the headlights behind him burned across the wet trees. Elias stirred against my chest as if even he could feel the tension gathering around us.
I looked at Ricardo. “Tell me he’s lying.”
Ricardo did not.
That frightened me more than if he had simply nodded.
Brad—Daniel, according to the records, though my mind still refused to rename the man I had married—moved closer until his shoulder touched mine. Harris kept her gun trained on Vale while one of his armed men shifted position beside the SUV.
Vale noticed.
“Detective, if I wanted Clara dead, we wouldn’t be talking.”
“That argument works better when you aren’t surrounded by men carrying rifles.”
“They’re protection.”
“From whom?”
Vale glanced toward the burning flashes still flickering through the woods behind us.
“Victor.”
As if summoned by his name, a gunshot cracked from somewhere uphill.
One of Vale’s men spun and fired toward the trees.
Harris shouted, “Everybody down!”
Brad grabbed my shoulder.
Ricardo pulled open the rear door of the SUV.
“Clara, inside!”
I crouched behind the vehicle, protecting Elias beneath my body. My stitches pulled painfully. Rainwater soaked through the knees of the hospital clothes someone had given me, and for several seconds the entire night reduced itself to the baby’s breath against my chest.
More shots.
Then silence.
Vale called into the darkness.
“You’ll hit the child, Victor!”
A voice answered from the trees.
“Then stop standing near him.”
Victor.
Brad stared uphill.
Ricardo whispered, “Idiot.”
Vale laughed.
“Family reunion.”
I wanted to scream at all of them.
Instead I looked at Ricardo.
“My family. Explain.”
He crouched beside the open door.
“Your mother was part of the second-generation follow-up.”
“You already said that.”
“No. Daniel’s files said it. I never confirmed what happened afterward.”
“Then confirm it now.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“Your grandmother, Elena Mendoza, was treated at one of my father’s clinics in the late 1960s.”
“For what?”
“An autoimmune disorder.”
“And?”
“The therapy worked unusually well.”
Vale answered from the other side of the SUV.
“Better than unusually.”
Harris snapped, “Quiet.”
Vale ignored her.
“Elena’s immune response was unlike anything they had recorded.”
I stared at him.
“You knew my grandmother?”
“I knew her file.”
Ricardo continued before Vale could.
“My father built Orpheus around the possibility that her response could be inherited.”
“Through daughters?”
“Yes.”
“Then why pair me with a Sullivan?”
“Because our family carried a different marker. One associated with tolerance to the treatment.”
I felt sick.
“So they wanted my response and Brad’s tolerance.”
Ricardo nodded.
“Combined.”
Vale called, “Not wanted. Predicted.”
Brad’s voice turned dangerous.
“Stop talking about my wife like she’s a blood sample.”
Vale smiled.
“I didn’t choose the language, Daniel. Science did.”
Brad flinched at the name.
Ricardo noticed.
“Don’t call him that.”
Vale’s smile widened.
“Still protecting identities? After all these years?”
Brad looked at his father.
“You knew my birth name and still called me Brad.”
Ricardo lowered his gaze.
“The switch had already been made. Changing it back would have exposed the program.”
“You mean exposed you.”
“I was trying to protect both of you.”
“Daniel died believing his own name belonged to him.”
Ricardo’s face tightened.
“So did you.”
The truth of that silenced everyone for a moment.
Then Victor shouted from the trees.
“Vale! Move away from the SUV.”
Vale sighed.
“Victor always preferred theatrics.”
Harris’s attention shifted between the two threats.
“We need out of this ravine.”
Brad looked at the road.
Vale’s men blocked one end.
Victor’s hidden group controlled the other.
“No safe direction.”
Ricardo said, “There’s an old service road behind the rock shelf.”
Vale’s expression changed.
That was enough for Brad.
“Move.”
We ran.
Or rather, everyone else ran. I managed a painful, stumbling half-jog while Brad kept one hand beneath my elbow and Ricardo covered the rear. Harris backed toward us with her gun raised.
The rock shelf concealed a narrow dirt track.
Ricardo led us through dripping branches.
Behind us Vale shouted orders.
A bullet struck a tree.
Brad wrapped himself around me.
“Keep going.”
I hated the terror in his voice.
Not terror for himself.
For Elias.
We reached another vehicle hidden beneath camouflage netting.
Victor stood beside it.
Harris raised her weapon.
“So much for hidden in the woods.”
Victor ignored her.
“Get in.”
Brad stared at his uncle.
“You expect me to trust you?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I expect you to understand Vale will catch you if you stay.”
A burst of gunfire behind us settled the argument.
We climbed inside.
Harris took the front passenger seat with her weapon still aimed partly at Victor.
Brad sat beside me in the back.
Ricardo squeezed into the third row.
Victor drove.
“Where?” Harris asked.
“Somewhere Vale doesn’t control.”
“That category seems increasingly theoretical.”
Victor turned onto a dirt road.
“My attorney’s office.”
Brad laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
“Not the public office.”
“Of course.”
We drove without headlights for the first two minutes.
Only after Victor reached a county road did he switch them on.
Elias began fussing.
I adjusted the blanket.
Brad looked toward me.
“Can I help?”
“No.”
He accepted it.
Then, after a moment, I added, “Hold the bottle.”
His head turned sharply.
I passed it to him.
His hands trembled.
“Like this?”
“Angle it more.”
He did.
Elias latched onto the nipple.
Brad stared at his son as though the world had stopped.
Victor glanced in the mirror.
Something unreadable passed across his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tonight, ‘nothing’ usually means a concealed crime.”
Victor almost smiled.
“Your son looks like Brad did.”
Brad’s expression hardened.
“Which Brad?”
Victor returned his eyes to the road.
“The man beside you.”
The distinction mattered.
More than I wanted it to.
Ricardo spoke from behind us.
“Elena Mendoza died young.”
I turned.
“My grandmother died when my mother was six.”
“Officially, yes.”
My blood chilled.
“What does that mean?”
“Your mother was told Elena died of complications from her illness.”
“And she didn’t?”
Ricardo looked toward Victor.
Victor’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“No,” Ricardo said. “She died during an Orpheus procedure.”
I stopped breathing.
Brad whispered, “Dad.”
Ricardo looked exhausted.
“My father believed Elena’s response could be intensified by repeating treatment. Her organs failed.”
I thought of a grandmother I knew only from two faded photographs.
My mother had always refused to discuss her childhood.
Every time I asked about Elena, she said there was nothing worth remembering.
“She knew,” I whispered.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
Pieces moved inside me.
Her refusal to use certain hospitals.
Her fear of medical forms.
The way she insisted I never participate in university health studies even when they offered money.
“She knew.”
Victor nodded.
“She learned enough.”
“How?”
“When she was sixteen, she broke into a storage room at one of the old clinics.”
I stared.
“She found her mother’s file?”
“And her own.”
My heart pounded.
“What happened after that?”
“She disappeared for nearly three years.”
I remembered family stories about my mother living with an aunt in Mexico.
There had always been gaps.
“She was hiding.”
“Yes.”
“From you?”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
“From Vale’s predecessor.”
“So the project followed her anyway.”
“It followed everyone.”
I looked down at Elias.
“And then me.”
Ricardo nodded.
“From birth.”
The knowledge settled heavily.
My childhood pediatric records.
School health forms.
Routine blood tests.
Every harmless appointment suddenly felt contaminated.
“Did my mother know I was being followed?”
“We don’t know.”
Victor said, “I think she suspected.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Maybe she thought silence protected you.”
I laughed once.
“Apparently that belief infects every family involved in this.”
Brad flinched.
Victor said nothing.
We reached a warehouse district just before dawn.
Victor drove through an unmarked steel gate and into an underground garage.
A woman in her fifties waited beside an elevator.
She wore a dark suit and held a legal folder.
“Marianne Holt,” Victor said. “Attorney. She handled Daniel’s trust litigation.”
Brad stared.
“My brother had a lawyer?”
“Your brother had several.”
Marianne looked at Brad.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not finding you sooner.”
Brad’s expression sharpened.
“You knew I was alive?”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“But Daniel left instructions concerning Clara Mendoza.”
My skin prickled.
“Before Brad and I met?”
“Yes.”
The elevator opened.
We went upstairs into a windowless conference room.
Marianne locked the door.
Then she placed a large sealed envelope on the table.
Across the front, handwritten in the same script we had seen in Daniel’s notebooks, were the words:
FOR CLARA MENDOZA, IF SHE EVER HAS A SON.
My hands went cold.
Brad stared.
“He knew.”
Marianne shook her head.
“He knew what Orpheus intended.”
I opened the envelope.
Inside was a letter.
Clara,
If you are reading this, then someone failed to stop what they planned for you.
My vision blurred.
The letter continued.
You do not know me, and if things go well, you never will. My name is Daniel Sullivan. I believe my family’s research program has identified you as a possible reproductive match for my brother.
Brad closed his eyes.
I kept reading.
I have no reason to believe my brother knows. If he ever meets you, assume coincidence until evidence proves otherwise. He is a better man than the family that raised us.
Brad turned away.
There was more.
If you have a son, they will call him valuable. They will tell you his blood could save lives, justify experiments, or complete decades of work.
Do not believe them.
No child owes science his body because adults became obsessed with what he might represent.
My throat closed.
The final paragraph was shorter.
The project’s greatest secret is not the child.
It is the mother.
I looked at Ricardo.
“What does that mean?”
Marianne opened another folder.
“Daniel discovered that the Sullivan marker was never necessary.”
Ricardo stared at her.
“What?”
“The entire pairing premise was wrong.”
Victor went still.
Marianne continued.
“Elias does not matter because Brad is his father.”
I felt the room tilt again.
“He matters because I’m his mother.”
“Yes.”
“But Vale said—”
“Vale believes the old theory.”
Marianne placed a medical report before us.
“Daniel proved the therapy response passes entirely through the Mendoza maternal line.”
Brad stared at the paper.
“So any child Clara had—”
“Could carry it.”
I whispered, “Could.”
Marianne nodded.
“Not guaranteed.”
“Then they don’t know whether Elias has anything unusual.”
“No.”
“Have they tested him?”
Everyone looked at Ricardo.
His face changed.
“What?”
“Vale accessed my prenatal records.”
Ricardo stood.
“Prenatal records wouldn’t prove it.”
“Then what would?”
“A newborn blood screen.”
The room went silent.
I remembered the hospital.
Angela’s tray.
The syringe.
Brad looked at me.
“She wasn’t trying to drug you.”
I understood.
“She was trying to take his blood.”
Victor swore.
Harris checked her phone.
“Can we determine whether any legitimate newborn sample was already collected?”
I thought back.
A nurse had mentioned screening.
Had they taken anything?
I was exhausted.
Everything blurred together.
“I don’t remember.”
Ricardo said, “If Vale gets a sample, he’ll know whether Elias inherited the response marker.”
“And if he did?”
Ricardo looked at my baby.
“He becomes proof that Orpheus worked.”
My stomach turned.
Marianne said, “There’s something else.”
I almost laughed.
“Of course there is.”
She opened the last page of Daniel’s letter.
A handwritten note appeared beneath his signature.
If Vale ever learns the Mendoza inheritance is maternal rather than paired, Clara becomes more valuable to Orpheus than any child she could have.
Brad read it twice.
Then he looked at me.
“No.”
Victor stood.
Harris asked, “More valuable how?”
Marianne’s voice remained quiet.
“Because Elias may or may not carry the trait.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Clara definitely does.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Daniel’s Letter Changed Who Vale Was Hunting, and Brad Finally Told Me What He Had Done During Seven Missing Months
The Doctor Cried When He Saw My Newborn Son—Then He Told Me My Husband Was Never Gone
Part 9 of 15
