Chapter 3 - THE CAPTAIN
Captain David Mercer had supervised me for nine years.
He taught me how to write clean reports, how to survive night shifts, and how to recognize when a witness was lying.
Now I recognized the lie in him.
He claimed Sarah was part of an undercover narcotics case.
No records supported it.
He ordered me to surrender the key.
I refused.
Hospital security removed him after Dr. Evans documented that he tried to enter Leo’s room without authorization.
Then Internal Affairs found something strange.
Mercer had accessed my personnel file three hundred times in six months.
He tracked my patrol routes.
My medical appointments.
My bank records.
He was not only watching Sarah.
He was watching me.
I used the storage key with Detective Lena Hayes from state police.
Inside Unit 214, we found photographs of Sarah, Lily, Leo, and me.
Years of photographs.
Sarah outside schools.
Me outside precincts.
Our mother standing between us when we were infants.
Two babies.
Twins.
Sarah and Rachel Brooks.
The birth certificate named our father as Thomas Collins.
My legal certificate named David Brooks.
Different names.
Same mother.
The unit also contained police uniforms, fake ambulance badges, and a ledger listing payments to officers.
Mercer’s name appeared repeatedly.
Then we found Sarah’s phone.
The last video showed her inside the black sedan.
She looked directly into the camera.
“Rachel, if you see this, Mercer knows about the children.”
She turned the phone.
A man sat beside her.
My father.
Older.
Alive.
He said:
“One of the twins became police.”
May you like
A pause.
“The other became bait.”
