Chapter 6 - Daniel’s Nine Missing Years
We drove east with lights and sirens.
Daniel rode in the armored federal SUV despite the medics threatening to restrain him to a hospital bed.
No one could stop him.
During the drive, he finally told me what happened after Samuel and Walter Mercer dragged him away nine years earlier.
They took him to Greenwood.
Officially, Greenwood was a private psychiatric treatment facility.
Unofficially, one wing was used to destroy witnesses.
“Samuel didn’t kill people if he could make the world stop believing them,” Daniel said.
Patients were admitted under fabricated diagnoses.
Medicated.
Isolated.
Records altered.
If they escaped and told the truth, authorities saw a mentally unstable patient with a documented history.
Perfect.
“You were there how long?”
“Fourteen months.”
I stared at him.
Our family had searched for Daniel while he was locked in a facility less than two hours away.
“How did you get out?”
“Lisa.”
The supposedly dead witness.
“She worked there?”
“Her identity had been erased too. Samuel kept her as an employee under another name.”
“She helped you escape.”
“Yes.”
“Then why was she with Samuel today?”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“I don’t know.”
Greenwood appeared beyond rows of pine trees.
Beautiful brick buildings.
Landscaped grounds.
A place wealthy families might trust.
Agents surrounded the property.
The administrator claimed Samuel Grant had never been there.
Then Sloan showed him a federal warrant.
His face changed.
We found the hidden wing behind a locked fire door.
Empty rooms.
Restraint beds.
Medication cabinets with missing logs.
In one room, Daniel stopped.
“This one.”
His room.
Scratches lined the inside of the door.
Small vertical marks.
Hundreds.
Days counted one by one.
Daniel touched them.
I realized my brother had made those marks while I was at home believing he might be dead.
I didn’t know what to say.
So I said nothing.
We found Evan in the facility’s chapel.
Alone.
Sitting in the front pew.
The moment he saw Daniel, he froze.
Daniel froze too.
Father and son stared at each other.
Three weeks had passed since they last met.
But now Evan knew everything had changed.
He knew Daniel might not be his biological father.
Daniel walked slowly toward him.
“Hey, buddy.”
Evan’s chin trembled.
“Are you really my dad?”
Daniel stopped.
“Yes.”
“But Grandpa said—”
“I know what Grandpa said.”
“He said your baby died.”
Daniel’s eyes filled.
“That might be true.”
“Then I’m not yours.”
Daniel knelt.
I saw all nine missing years in my brother’s face.
The soccer games watched from a distance.
Birthdays missed.
First words he never heard.
Nightmares he wasn’t there to calm.
“No,” Daniel said. “Listen to me.”
Evan cried silently.
“You are my son because I choose you every single day. I should’ve been brave enough to choose you where everyone could see it.”
Evan stared at him.
“Even if I’m somebody else’s kid?”
“You’re Evan.”
Daniel touched his own chest.
“And you’re mine here.”
The boy threw himself into Daniel’s arms.
My brother broke.
Not quietly.
He sobbed into Evan’s hair.
I turned away because the moment belonged to them.
Then Evan pulled back.
“Grandpa left.”
Daniel’s expression sharpened.
“With Lisa?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he got what he needed.”
Sloan entered.
“What?”
Evan pointed toward his hospital bracelet.
“He took my blood.”
My stomach turned.
“Why?”
Daniel stood.
“Because he needs proof of the switch.”
“To destroy evidence?”
“No.”
Daniel’s face was grim.
“To find Evan’s biological parents.”
The chapel door slammed.
An agent shouted from the hallway.
“We found Lisa!”
She was in the parking lot.
Bleeding from a gunshot wound.
Alive.
Barely.
She grabbed Daniel’s hand.
“Samuel knows.”
“Knows what?”
“The baby.”
“Who were his parents?”
Lisa gasped.
“Not were.”
Daniel leaned closer.
“Lisa.”
“They’re alive.”
“Who?”
Her eyes found me.
“The father is someone you know.”
My stomach dropped.
“Who?”
Lisa whispered one name.
“Warren.”
Deputy Chief Thomas Warren.
The corrupt officer.
The man who helped cover Daniel’s disappearance.
He was Evan’s biological father.
But Lisa wasn’t finished.
“Warren didn’t know.”
“Where’s the mother?” Sloan asked.
Lisa coughed blood.
“She knows.”
“Who is she?”
Lisa whispered.
“Melissa.”
Daniel went still.
Impossible.
Melissa was Evan’s mother.
But if Daniel’s biological son had died and Melissa’s second child survived—
Then both babies had belonged to Melissa.
Twins.
Daniel understood first.
His face collapsed.
“Melissa had twins.”
Lisa nodded weakly.
“Samuel told her there was one.”
One twin fathered by Daniel.
One by Warren?
Biologically, twins usually share the same father, but superfecundation—twins with different fathers—was rare but possible.
Daniel stared in horror.
“Melissa slept with Warren?”
Lisa shook her head.
“No.”
Then her eyes closed.
Doctors rushed her away before she could explain.
We had only fragments.
Melissa.
Warren.
Samuel.
Twins.
Daniel’s biological son dead.
Evan alive.
Then the truth arrived from a place none of us expected.
The Greenwood administrator asked to speak privately.
Twenty-five years earlier, Samuel Grant had funded fertility research.
Experimental embryo storage.
Illegal insemination procedures.
Melissa wasn’t naturally pregnant with twins from two fathers.
Samuel had used his own daughter as a test subject.
Without her informed consent.
One embryo was Daniel’s child.
The other had been created using reproductive material stolen from Thomas Warren during a medical procedure years earlier.
Samuel was obsessed with proving identity could be manufactured.
He wanted two infants, born minutes apart, raised under interchangeable records, to demonstrate how little biology mattered once paperwork changed.
One baby died.
Evan lived.
My disgust went beyond anger.
Daniel looked physically ill.
“This wasn’t a crime operation to him.”
“No,” Sloan said.
“It was research.”
A phone rang in the chapel.
Not ours.
The old telephone mounted near the pastor’s office.
I answered.
Samuel.
“You found him.”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.”
“You’re finished.”
Samuel laughed softly.
“You still think this is about escape.”
“What is it about?”
“My legacy.”
“I saw your legacy downstairs.”
“No, Michael. You saw failures.”
“What do you want?”
“Evan’s existence proves my theory.”
“He proves you’re a psychopath.”
“History often dislikes pioneers.”
I nearly crushed the receiver.
“Where is Melissa?”
“With Warren.”
Daniel grabbed my arm.
Samuel continued.
“Neither knows the whole truth.”
“You’re going to tell them.”
“I already have.”
Then he said something that made Daniel turn white.
“Warren believes Melissa killed his son.”
“What?”
“And Melissa believes Warren murdered Daniel.”
I understood.
Samuel had placed two desperate people together.
Fed each a different lie.
“Where are they?”
“Back where it began.”
St. Matthew’s.
Then an explosion shook Greenwood’s windows.
Not here.
The distant horizon.
Black smoke rose west of us.
Bellwood.
St. Matthew’s Hospital.
May you like
Samuel whispered through the receiver:
“By the time you arrive, one parent will have killed the other.”
