CHAPTER 19 — THE PATERNITY FILE
Dana drove the ambulance to an abandoned fire station outside the county line.
Rebecca had used the location during an earlier investigation. It had no active cameras, no internet connection, and no official connection to the Bennett family.
Mason was barely conscious.
Elaine cleaned his wound while Margaret sat nearby, watching him without sympathy.
Cole stood at the opposite end of the garage.
Claire held his gun.
“Tell me everything.”
Cole looked at Lily, who was sleeping under a blanket on the old dispatch-room couch.
“I did not know.”
“That is not an answer.”
“My mother disappeared when I was six.”
“Sarah?”
“She called herself Sarah Cole.”
Margaret looked up.
“Cole was the name she used after leaving the Vane family.”
Aaron continued.
“I spent nine years in foster care. When I turned eighteen, a scholarship foundation paid for college and the police academy. I believed it was anonymous.”
“It was Gray Tide,” Claire said.
“I know that now.”
“You followed me for Sarah.”
“I was assigned to Daniel Cross five years ago. I thought Daniel was laundering money through shell companies. I did not know he was connected to my mother until tonight.”
Mason gave a weak laugh from the table.
“You were always slow.”
Elaine tightened the bandage against his wound.
Mason groaned.
Claire faced him.
“You knew Cole was the donor.”
“I knew Sarah called him Source Zero.”
“Did you know they used his genetic material?”
“Not until after Lily was born.”
Cole’s jaw tightened.
“No clinic ever had permission to use my DNA.”
Margaret spoke quietly.
“You were hospitalized after being shot during your first year as a detective.”
Cole looked at her.
“How do you know that?”
“Your blood and reproductive tissue were collected during surgery.”
“That does not explain why you know.”
“Because I found the extraction order.”
Claire stared at her mother.
“You knew Aaron might be Lily’s father?”
“I knew he was a possibility.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I could not prove it.”
“You let me live with Mason while you knew my daughter had been created as part of an experiment.”
Margaret’s face crumpled.
“I was trying to keep both of you alive.”
Rebecca called again from a disposable phone.
She had reached a motel thirty miles from the hospital.
Claire put her on speaker.
“Can you verify Cole’s relationship to Lily?”
“I copied part of the genetic database before Daniel found me.”
“How long will it take?”
“I need a sample from Aaron.”
Cole pulled several strands of hair from his head.
Dana sealed them inside an evidence bag.
A volunteer doctor loyal to Rebecca arrived before sunrise. He carried a portable testing unit and worked in silence.
While they waited, Mason regained consciousness.
Lily sat beside him.
“You lied about Mommy,” she said.
“Yes.”
“You said she didn’t want me.”
“I was afraid she would take you away.”
“You took me away.”
Mason closed his eyes.
“I did.”
Lily looked toward Cole.
“Is he my real daddy?”
Every adult in the room became still.
Claire knelt in front of her.
“Mason raised you. Detective Cole may have helped create you, but none of this changes who you are.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Did he know?”
Cole shook his head.
Lily studied him with the seriousness of a child trying to understand an adult betrayal.
“Do you want to be my daddy?”
Cole could not answer.
The testing machine chimed.
The doctor looked at the screen.
Then at Claire.
“The probability of biological paternity is 99.98 percent.”
Mason turned his face toward the wall.
Cole sat down as though his legs had stopped supporting him.
Claire felt no relief.
Only another piece of her life being torn from her control.
The fire station’s old television suddenly switched on.
Sarah Vane appeared at a press conference.
Behind her stood the state police commissioner.
“My granddaughter has been abducted,” Sarah announced.
A photograph of Claire appeared beside her.
“Claire Bennett is armed, emotionally unstable, and traveling with several dangerous fugitives.”
Another photograph appeared.
Aaron Cole.
Sarah looked directly into the camera.
“Detective Cole is not helping Claire.”
She paused.
May you like
“He is the father who helped her steal our child.”
Outside the station, police sirens began approaching.
