Chapter 14 - Sarah's Sister
Blake stared at the face on the screen until the resemblance became unbearable.
The woman was not Sarah.
She was Sarah's younger sister, Rebecca, whom Blake had been told died in a boating accident before he met his wife.
Sarah had never shown him a photograph.
She said the loss was too painful.
Naomi located an old birth record that confirmed the sisters shared the same parents.
A later identity search showed Rebecca had been living under several names.
The detective found her in a quiet rental apartment.
She agreed to meet only if Blake came without news cameras or company security.
The detective attended nearby as a condition of the meeting.
Rebecca opened the door and began crying the moment she saw him.
“You have her expression,” she said.
“Where is the key?” Blake asked.
“I took it because Sarah asked me to.”
“Sarah has been dead for six years.”
“Her instruction didn't expire when she died.”
Blake forced himself to sit.
Rebecca admitted Sarah had contacted her before the surgery.
The sisters had repaired their relationship after years of estrangement.
Rebecca helped Sarah gather evidence against Kessler.
When Sarah died, Rebecca believed the investigators who dismissed the case as a grieving husband's misunderstanding.
But recently a stranger began sending her pages from the missing archive.
She panicked and took the key before someone else did.
“Why pretend to be Sarah at the bank?”
“I had her old authorization paperwork and thought the disguise would confuse whoever followed me.”
“You terrified me.”
“I know.”
“Why did you tell someone to enter my daughter's room?”
Rebecca looked genuinely shocked.
“I didn't.”
Blake showed her the intruder's photograph.
Rebecca shook her head.
“That's the man who followed me last week.”
She opened a cupboard and brought out a metal case recovered from Sarah's drawer.
Inside were copies of signed consent forms, a small memory card, and a photograph of Abigail's first birthday.
On the back Sarah had written: IF THEY SAY I CONSENTED, SHOW THEM THE ORIGINAL.
Rebecca told Blake she had one more item.
It was a recording Sarah made the night before she died.
She pressed play.
Sarah's voice filled the apartment.
“Blake, I need you to know something I couldn't say safely while I was alive.”
A long pause followed.
“Thomas Stanley isn't trying to cure Abigail.”
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“He's trying to erase what his research did to her.”
