Chapter 3
The darkness lasted only three seconds.
It felt like three minutes.
Noah screamed.
I moved toward Daniel’s voice.
“Stay where you are,” he ordered.
Emergency lights switched on along the floor.
A dim red glow filled the hallway.
Daniel held Noah against his chest.
The baby was trembling.
So was I.
Marcus’s voice came through the security radio.
“Backup generator is running, sir. Main power was deliberately disconnected.”
“From where?”
“Exterior service panel.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Vanessa couldn’t have reached it that fast.”
I understood immediately.
“She had help.”
Marcus returned through the patio doors.
“The Mercedes is gone. Gate camera died before she exited.”
Daniel swore under his breath.
“Lock the estate down.”
“We have already called Dallas police.”
“No one leaves the property until they arrive.”
Daniel looked at the flash drive.
“Can we open that without connecting to the house network?”
Marcus nodded.
“Your private office has an isolated laptop.”
We moved upstairs.
Daniel’s office looked more like a financial command center than a room in a home.
Three monitors.
A wall safe.
Locked cabinets.
A huge desk overlooking the property.
He placed Noah in the portable crib he kept beside the leather couch.
Noah reached toward me.
I stayed near him.
Daniel inserted the flash drive.
A password screen appeared.
“What would Emily use?” he asked.
I thought about it.
Emily loved old movies.
Coffee.
Her mother.
And a ridiculous orange cat named Winston.
I tried WINSTON.
Wrong.
Her mother’s birthday.
Wrong.
Then I remembered something she said the night Noah was born.
If you ever need this, Claire, remember where we promised we would go when we turned thirty.
“Paris,” I whispered.
I entered PARIS30.
The drive opened.
There were seven folders.
CONTRACT.
MEDICAL.
MESSAGES.
PHOTOS.
VANESSA.
HARRISON.
IF I’M GONE.
Daniel clicked the final folder first.
Inside was a video.
Emily appeared on the screen.
My breath caught.
I had not seen her face since her funeral.
Her brown hair was tied back.
Her eyes were swollen from crying.
She looked exhausted.
But alive.
Daniel sat motionless.
Emily spoke.
“If Claire is watching this, something has probably happened to me.”
My eyes filled.
Daniel turned up the volume.
“I agreed to carry a child because I needed money for my mother’s care. I was told the intended parent was a private client who could not have a child through a traditional relationship. I was told the medical process was legal and anonymous.”
She looked away from the camera.
“Then I learned the father was Daniel Harrison.”
Daniel leaned forward.
Emily continued.
“I learned his personal assistant at the time had approved several payments connected to my contract.”
Daniel frowned.
“My assistant?”
Emily held a document toward the camera.
The image was blurry, but a name was visible.
Vanessa Reed.
Daniel whispered, “No.”
Before becoming Vanessa Harrison, she had been Vanessa Reed.
Daniel looked stunned.
“She worked for my New York office for six months.”
“You knew her?”
“Barely. She was assigned through an outside executive staffing company.”
“But you said you met her at the museum fundraiser.”
“That’s what she told me.”
Emily continued speaking.
“Vanessa Reed came to the hospital tonight.”
Daniel went rigid.
“She told me the baby belonged to the Harrisons now and that I needed to forget everything I knew.”
Emily looked directly into the camera.
“She said Daniel had no idea who I was. I believe her about that.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“She said the surrogacy agency had been paid to keep the contract quiet. She said if I tried to contact Daniel, I would lose everything.”
Emily swallowed.
“I asked her why she cared.”
The screen went silent for a moment.
Then Emily said, “She told me she was going to marry Daniel Harrison.”
Daniel stared at the screen.
“She planned it.”
I said nothing.
The video continued.
“At first I thought she was insane. But Vanessa knew things about Daniel’s life. His schedule. His family. His finances. She had copies of documents she should never have had.”
Daniel immediately opened the VANESSA folder.
Hundreds of files appeared.
Photographs.
Travel schedules.
Scanned emails.
Bank records.
Pictures of Daniel outside restaurants.
At airports.
At charity events.
Some dated four years earlier.
Long before his marriage.
Daniel stood up.
“She was watching me.”
I felt cold.
Not loving him.
Studying him.
Emily’s video continued in the background.
“I don’t know what Vanessa wants with Daniel. But I know this pregnancy was part of it.”
Daniel turned back.
Emily wiped tears from her eyes.
“If my baby is born safely, I want him to go to his father. I researched Daniel. He seems like a decent man. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think the baby will be safer with him than with anyone connected to Vanessa.”
Daniel looked toward Noah.
His face broke for the first time.
Not rage.
Grief.
A woman he had never met had trusted him with her child.
And he had married the woman she feared.
Emily continued.
“Claire, I’m sorry for putting this on you. If anything happens to me, protect him.”
I covered my mouth.
Daniel looked at me.
“You knew all this?”
“Not all of it.”
“How much?”
“She told me Vanessa threatened her. She never told me Vanessa had been watching you for years.”
“Why didn’t you give this to me after Emily died?”
The question hurt because I had asked myself the same thing every day.
“Because Emily died in a car accident.”
Daniel stared.
“The police said there was no evidence anyone caused it.”
“And you believed that?”
“I wanted to.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” I said. “I was terrified.”
He went quiet.
“I was a twenty-seven-year-old nanny with no money and no family powerful enough to protect me. Emily was dead. Vanessa was moving closer to you. I thought if I gave you the drive and was wrong, I would destroy everything.”
Daniel’s anger softened slightly.
“And if you were right?”
“I thought she might destroy me.”
Noah made a small sound from the crib.
We both looked over.
He was awake, staring at us.
Daniel picked him up.
Then Marcus entered.
“Police are here.”
Daniel closed the laptop.
“No one gets this drive.”
“Sir?”
“Not yet.”
I stared at him.
“We need to tell the police.”
“We will.”
“Then why—”
“Because if Vanessa has contacts inside the agency, my company, and possibly the hospital, I want to know exactly what we have before copies start disappearing.”
Marcus nodded.
“The estate network is compromised.”
Daniel removed the flash drive.
“I want an independent forensic team here tonight.”
Marcus left.
Daniel looked at me.
“We tell police about the attempted drowning. We give them the security recording from the local backup.”
“And Emily?”
“Tomorrow morning, I contact my attorney and the detective who handled her accident.”
I hesitated.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
“There’s something else.”
His face tightened.
“What else could there possibly be?”
“Emily called me the morning before she died.”
He stopped.
“She said she had made another copy.”
“Of the drive?”
“Of some evidence.”
“Where?”
“She never told me.”
“Why?”
“She said she had given it to someone who would know what to do if she died.”
Daniel stared.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
A police officer appeared at the office door.
“Mr. Harrison?”
Daniel slipped the drive into his pocket.
“Yes.”
“We need your statement.”
For the next hour, the house became a crime scene.
Officers photographed the pool.
The stroller.
The security panel.
The broken service box.
They watched the backup footage.
The detective, a woman named Erica Shaw, watched Vanessa push the stroller three times.
Her face grew harder each time.
“That is clear enough for an attempted murder investigation,” she said.
Daniel flinched at the phrase.
Attempted murder.
Directed at his eight-month-old son.
“Find her,” he said.
“We have alerts on the vehicle.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“We understand.”
“No. You don’t.”
Shaw looked at him.
“She spent years planning her way into my life.”
The detective’s eyes narrowed.
Daniel realized he had said too much.
“What does that mean?”
He looked at me.
Then back at Shaw.
“It means I recently learned my wife lied about how we met.”
“That’s relevant.”
“My attorney will provide additional information in the morning.”
Shaw clearly disliked that answer.
But before she could challenge him, her phone rang.
She answered.
Her expression changed.
“When?”
She turned toward Daniel.
“Your Mercedes was found.”
“Where?”
“About four miles away.”
“Was she in it?”
“No.”
“Then where is she?”
“We don’t know.”
Shaw hesitated.
“There was something inside the vehicle.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“A child safety seat.”
My stomach dropped.
Noah’s seat was in Daniel’s SUV.
Vanessa did not have another baby.
Shaw continued.
“And a hospital bracelet.”
Daniel went still.
“Whose?”
The detective looked at her notes.
“The name printed on it is Emily Carter.”
I grabbed the edge of the table.
“That’s impossible.”
Emily had died eighteen months earlier.
Shaw looked at me.
“You knew her?”
“Yes.”
Daniel answered before I could say more.
“She was Noah’s biological mother.”
The detective froze.
Then everything changed.
Again.
Shaw stopped treating the case like a domestic crisis.
She called for another team.
She ordered the Mercedes sealed.
She asked Daniel how Vanessa obtained a dead woman’s hospital bracelet.
He had no answer.
Neither did I.
At two in the morning, the police finally left.
Marcus doubled the guards.
Noah slept in Daniel’s bedroom.
I sat outside the nursery with a cup of coffee I could not drink.
Daniel came down the hallway.
He looked ten years older.
“Claire.”
I stood.
“What?”
He held his phone.
“A number just texted me.”
“Vanessa?”
“No.”
He showed me the screen.
Unknown sender.
One message.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY EMILY DIED, COME ALONE.
Beneath it was an address.
I recognized it instantly.
It was the apartment Emily and I had shared in college.
And beneath the address was another line.
BRING CLAIRE.
Daniel looked at me.
“They know your name.”
I stared at the message.
Then another text appeared.
YOU HAVE UNTIL SUNRISE.
May you like
And finally:
DO NOT CALL THE POLICE.
