Chapter 2 - The Dead Man's Access Card
Edward cursed under his breath.
Kai ignored him.
“What happened when you arrived?”
Jennie had told Kai parts of the story before.
Never all of it.
Now she forced herself through each detail.
The stone mansion.
The shuttered windows.
The table in the center of a room that should have been a dining room.
Kai unconscious beneath harsh portable lights.
A medical bag with half its contents missing.
A frightened young man holding a blood-pressure cuff like he had never used one before.
No ambulance.
No 911 call.
No explanation.
“I asked what you had taken,” Jennie said.
“No one answered.”
“I asked whether you had any known cardiac condition.”
“No one answered that either.”
“So I treated what I could see.”
Kai leaned against the desk.
“And then?”
“I stabilized you as much as I could.”
“You wrote notes.”
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
Jennie hesitated.
“At my apartment.”
Kai stared at her.
“You kept those too?”
“I told you the night made no sense.”
A trace of irritation crossed his face.
Then it vanished beneath something else.
Respect, perhaps.
Or calculation.
Edward spoke carefully.
“Ms. Sterling, you said you woke in a bedroom after drinking water.”
“Yes.”
“Was Mr. Sterling in the same room?”
Jennie looked at Kai.
“Yes.”
Edward’s eyes moved between them.
Kai’s face became unreadable.
“No one touched me,” Jennie said immediately.
“I was fully dressed.”
“I checked myself because I was frightened and confused.”
“I had no sign that anyone had done anything to me.”
Kai’s jaw tightened anyway.
“What about me?”
“You were still unconscious on top of the covers.”
Edward looked disturbed.
“Someone staged that room.”
“That was my conclusion,” Jennie said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Kai finally sat across from her.
“Maybe I do.”
Jennie waited.
He reached for the silver brooch lying beside the lab report.
“I found this in the bedroom when I woke.”
Jennie looked at it.
“You knew it was mine?”
“Not then.”
“How did you find me?”
“I didn’t.”
Edward looked away.
Jennie caught it.
“You did.”
Edward remained silent.
“Edward.”
Kai’s voice was warning enough.
Edward exhaled.
“I traced the brooch.”
Jennie’s brows drew together.
“How?”
“It had been repaired once by a jeweler in Evanston.”
“My father had it repaired after my mother dropped it.”
“The repair shop kept a photograph for insurance documentation.”
Edward turned the tablet toward her.
The image showed Rosie decades younger, smiling in a simple white dress with the silver brooch pinned near her shoulder.
Jennie’s throat tightened.
“I found your name through the family invoice.”
“And then you told Kai to marry me?”
Edward did not answer quickly enough.
Jennie stood.
“You knew who I was before Sterling Tower.”
“Yes.”
“Kai?”
Kai’s silence was worse.
Jennie stepped back.
“The marriage contract was not random.”
“No.”
“You chose me because of that night.”
“In part.”
“In part?”
Her anger broke through.
“You paid my father’s debt, paid my mother’s care, and put a ring on my hand because you found a piece of jewelry in a room where someone drugged both of us?”
“I was not drugged in the same way you were.”
“That is not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
Kai stood.
“Someone poisoned me.”
“Someone brought you to me.”
“Someone sedated you.”
“Someone arranged for us to wake in the same room.”
“And six weeks later, my family suddenly needed me married quickly enough that Graham already had a candidate list prepared.”
Jennie stared at him.
“You thought I was part of it.”
“At first.”
The words struck like a slap.
“And you still married me?”
“I wanted you where I could see you.”
Edward looked uncomfortable.
Jennie laughed in disbelief.
“So I was not a wife.”
“I was evidence.”
Kai’s expression tightened.
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what you meant.”
Jennie grabbed the laboratory envelope.
Kai caught her wrist, not hard, but fast.
She looked down at his hand.
He released her immediately.
“Do not leave this house tonight.”
“You do not get to order me around after admitting you married me as surveillance.”
“The man who helped abduct you six weeks ago just used my dead father’s credentials inside a secure archive.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I know.”
His voice dropped.
“That is why I’m asking instead of locking the gate.”
Jennie froze.
It was the closest thing to honesty she had heard from him all night.
Edward’s tablet chimed.
He looked down.
Then his face changed.
“The archive server copied a file before the intruder left.”
“What file?” Kai asked.
Edward turned the screen.
The filename contained only eleven characters.
TS-0417-KS.
Jennie recognized the date format.
“April seventeenth?”
Kai’s face went still.
“That was the date of my first infertility diagnosis.”
Edward opened the audit trail.
The stolen file had been downloaded onto a removable drive.
A second line showed something else.
The intruder had also deleted one folder.
The folder was labeled THOMAS HART.
Jennie stopped breathing.
Thomas Hart was her father.
Kai looked at her.
“You told me your father drove trucks.”
“He did.”
“For whom?”
Jennie swallowed.
“He worked independent contracts all over Illinois.”
Edward was already searching.
His fingers stopped.
The room became silent.
“What?” Jennie demanded.
Edward turned the tablet toward her.
A twenty-year-old employment ledger appeared on the screen.
Thomas Hart had not merely hauled freight for Sterling companies.
For seven years, he had been assigned to Sterling Biomedical Logistics.
The division had been dissolved four months before his death.
Kai read the screen twice.
Then he looked at Jennie.
“Your father worked for my family.”
Jennie felt the floor shift beneath her.
“No.”
Edward scrolled further.
There was one final line in the personnel file.
It was a termination note signed four days before Thomas’s fatal highway accident.
REASON FOR TERMINATION: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO EXECUTIVE MEDICAL MATERIALS.
Jennie stared at the words.
Kai’s voice was barely audible.
“Your father saw my medical file.”
Jennie’s blood turned cold.
Then the security system sounded a single low alarm.
Edward looked at the wall panel.
“Perimeter breach.”
Kai moved toward the door.
Edward caught his arm.
“It is not outside.”
He looked at the alert again.
“It came from inside the house.”
A second warning appeared.
BASEMENT ACCESS OPEN.
Jennie remembered the one rule everyone had repeated since the day she moved in.
Never enter the basement.
Kai looked toward the hallway.
Then every light in the library went out.
The darkness lasted nine seconds.
Jennie counted each one because counting kept panic from making decisions for her.
On the tenth second, emergency lights flickered red along the baseboards.
Kai was already at the library door.
Edward drew a compact flashlight from his jacket.
“Stay here,” Kai said.
Jennie stared at him.
“You are joking.”
“I am not.”
“My father’s name was just deleted from your archive, and now someone opened the basement inside the house where you have forbidden me to go for three months.”
“That is precisely why you are staying here.”
“No.”
Kai turned.
Jennie met his eyes.
“You married the wrong woman if you wanted obedience.”
Edward made a sound that might have been a cough hiding a laugh.
Kai did not appreciate it.
“Fine.”
He pointed at Jennie.
“You stay behind me.”
“I am not twelve.”
“You are pregnant.”
“And still capable of walking down stairs.”
The words hung between them.
It was the first time Kai had spoken as though the pregnancy might be real.
He seemed to realize it too.
Neither commented.
They crossed the darkened main hall.
Two security guards met them near the service corridor.
The basement door stood open.
The electronic lock had been disabled cleanly.
No broken panel.
No forced hinges.
Whoever had entered knew the system.
Kai descended first.
Jennie followed with one hand on the rail.
The basement was nothing like she had imagined.
There were no wine racks or storage trunks.
The lower level looked like a private records facility.
Steel doors lined a narrow corridor.
Small cameras watched every angle.
A climate-control system hummed behind the walls.
Jennie stared.
“This is why I was not allowed down here?”
Kai kept moving.
“My family stores sensitive documents here.”
“Sensitive enough to need biometric locks?”
“Yes.”
“Whose secrets are these?”
“All of ours.”
At the end of the corridor, one steel door stood ajar.
Edward examined the keypad.
“Override code.”
“Whose?” Kai asked.
Edward looked at the log.
“Your mother’s.”
Jennie felt a pulse of anger.
Helena had threatened her mother less than two hours ago.
Now Helena’s code had been used to open a forbidden archive.
Kai pushed the door wider.
Inside were rows of compact shelving and sealed evidence boxes.
One shelf had been pulled open.
Files littered the floor.
A desk lamp burned in the far corner despite the power failure upstairs.
Jennie noticed the smell first.
Bleach.
Fresh bleach.
“Someone cleaned something,” she whispered.
Kai looked toward the sink beside the desk.
Water still ran in a thin stream.
Edward moved toward the security terminal.
Jennie crouched beside the scattered files.
Most were old legal records.
Corporate settlements.
Medical confidentiality agreements.
Private arbitration decisions.
Then she saw a familiar name.
HART, THOMAS.
Her breath caught.
The folder was empty.
Only the label remained.
“Kai.”
He crossed to her.
Jennie held up the empty folder.
Edward swore.
“The digital folder deleted upstairs had a physical counterpart here.”
“Had?” Jennie asked.
Edward pointed to the bleach smell.
Someone had destroyed the contents.
Jennie searched the floor.
A tiny corner of paper protruded beneath the shelving unit.
She reached for it.
Kai caught her shoulder.
“Gloves.”
Jennie looked at him.
“Nurse.”
He was right.
Edward handed her a pair from an emergency cabinet.
Jennie pulled the paper free.
It was scorched along one side.
Only six typed lines remained readable.
She saw her father’s name.
She saw the date three weeks before his death.
And she saw a phrase that made her stomach clench.
SUBJECT: STERLING, KAI - REPRODUCTIVE SUPPRESSION PROTOCOL.
Jennie looked at Kai.
He took the fragment.
His face lost color.
“Suppression protocol?”
Edward whispered the words as though saying them louder would make them more real.
Jennie scanned the remaining text.
DOSING CONTINUATION AUTHORIZED.
MONITOR LH/FSH RESPONSE.
TARGET: MAINTAIN AZOOSPERMIC PRESENTATION.
Kai’s hand tightened around the paper.
Jennie spoke carefully.
“Azoospermic means no sperm detected in semen.”
“I know what it means.”
“This does not read like a diagnosis.”
“No.”
“It reads like someone was trying to create one.”
Kai’s eyes stayed on the paper.
A faint sound came from behind the shelving.
Jennie turned.
Kai reacted first.
He pulled her backward just as a metal storage tray crashed down where she had been crouching.
One security guard rushed around the shelving unit.
A figure in dark clothing slammed into him and ran toward the rear exit.
May you like
“Stop!” Edward shouted.
The basement door had opened, and someone inside the house was already destroying the past.
