Chapter 7 - REBECCA'S BETRAYAL
Sarah couldn’t move.
“That’s her.”
Marian looked equally stunned.
“She came willingly.”
Thomas watched through the binoculars.
Rebecca spoke briefly to Keene.
Then entered the house.
Sarah’s voice cracked.
“She warned me about them.”
“Maybe that recording was fake.”
Marian shook her head.
“No.”
“I was there when she made it.”
“Then why is she with him?”
Thomas lowered the binoculars.
“We don’t know yet.”
Sarah hated those words.
They remained beneath the dock until Evan and Keene moved away.
Then Thomas crawled toward the boathouse.
An old maintenance tunnel connected it to the mansion basement.
Thomas remembered it from a training exercise years earlier.
They entered.
Inside the basement, dust covered old furniture.
But the electrical system was new.
Cameras.
Servers.
Locked filing rooms.
Veil House wasn’t abandoned.
It had been modernized secretly.
Thomas accessed one unlocked computer.
Sarah watched folders appear.
MOTHERS.
PLACEMENTS.
ACTIVE WITNESSES.
INFANTS.
Marian whispered.
“My God.”
Thomas opened a spreadsheet.
Seventeen entries.
Lucy was the final one.
V-17.
Beside her name were three status fields.
MATERNAL LINE CONFIRMED.
SECOND KEY CREATED.
TRANSFER PENDING.
Sarah pointed.
“Transfer?”
Thomas shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Footsteps sounded overhead.
They moved behind storage shelves.
A door opened.
Rebecca descended alone.
Sarah stopped breathing.
Rebecca walked directly toward their hiding place.
“I know you’re there.”
Thomas raised his gun.
Rebecca stopped.
“Please don’t.”
Sarah stepped out.
For twenty-three years, she had imagined her biological mother as a stranger.
Now the stranger stood ten feet away.
Rebecca’s eyes filled with tears.
“You look exactly like my sister.”
Sarah didn’t care.
“You came here with them.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To keep you alive.”
Sarah laughed bitterly.
“That sounds familiar.”
Rebecca flinched.
“I deserve that.”
Thomas spoke.
“Start explaining.”
Rebecca glanced toward the ceiling.
“We have minutes.”
“The Circle knows Lucy’s birth created the second verification key.”
“Second?”
“The first is Sarah.”
“The second is Lucy.”
“For what?”
Rebecca looked at her daughter.
“A trust.”
Sarah frowned.
“What trust?”
“Not money.”
“Evidence.”
“Thirty years ago, an attorney created an automatic release system.”
“If two generations of the Lane family were independently verified as alive, sealed files would become eligible for court review.”
Thomas stared.
“Lucy triggered it.”
“Yes.”
“Keene needs both of them?”
“He needs their identities discredited before Monday.”
“What happens Monday?”
Rebecca’s face tightened.
“A federal judge opens the original Veil archive.”
Sarah whispered.
“That’s the hearing Keene mentioned.”
“Yes.”
“And if we appear?”
“The entire Circle can be exposed.”
Thomas asked the question none of them wanted to ask.
“Who runs it now?”
Rebecca looked toward the ceiling.
Before she could answer, the basement lights came on.
A man’s voice sounded from the staircase.
“Why don’t you let me answer that?”
Arthur Hale stepped into view.
Thomas’s father.
May you like
The retired police chief they all believed had died eight years ago.
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