Chapter 3 - MY MOTHER’S VOICE
Marcus answered the phone and put it on speaker.
For several seconds, we heard only static.
Then my mother whispered, “Emily?”
I nearly collapsed.
“Mom?”
Her breathing sounded weak.
“Don’t trust Tyler.”
I stared at him.
He stopped smiling.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
A man shouted somewhere behind her.
The line crackled.
My mother rushed her words.
“He wants the baby because of your father’s files.”
“What files?”
“You were never supposed to find out.”
The call ended.
I grabbed Marcus’s sleeve.
“Find her.”
“We’re tracing it.”
Tyler laughed from the floor.
“You people always trace the wrong thing.”
One agent searched his pockets and found two phones.
Neither had a call log.
Marcus held up the transmitter.
“This signal is routing through a private medical network.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Medical?”
Tyler’s gaze dropped to my stomach.
I remembered every prenatal appointment he insisted on attending.
Every blood test he scheduled.
Every vitamin he handed me himself.
The third agent opened Tyler’s wallet.
Behind his driver’s license was a hospital access card.
Name: Dr. Tyler Vance.
The photograph was his.
The surname was not.
“You said you worked in construction,” I whispered.
Tyler’s expression hardened.
“I told you what you needed to hear.”
Marcus looked at the card.
“Vance Genetic Research.”
I knew the name.
My father had worked there before he died.
At least, before my mother told me he had died in a car accident.
Marcus turned toward me.
“Emily, did your father ever mention Project Eve?”
“No.”
Tyler closed his eyes.
That was enough.
Marcus ordered one agent to secure him.
Then he examined the cuts on my stomach.
They were too straight.
Too evenly spaced.
Not random injuries.
Symbols.
I had thought Tyler carved them in rage.
Marcus photographed them.
When he rotated the image, the cuts formed numbers.
4-17-29.
My birth date.
Beneath them was one additional mark.
A small triangle.
The symbol used by Vance Genetic Research.
Marcus looked at Tyler.
“What did you inject into her?”
I stared down at my belly.
May you like
Tyler’s silence became an answer.
Then my baby stopped moving.
