Chapter 4
I told Sophie to stay inside and walked out to the car alone.
“Where did you get this picture?” I held up my phone.
“An unknown number sent it.” He showed me his screen, his fingers tight around the phone. “They told me to forward it to you.”
Two more lines appeared above the photograph.
Send this to Nora.
Ask her who’s buried in the woods.
“You’re working with them.” I stared at him.
“I can barely remember where I’ve been for the past seven years.” He lowered his phone. “Three months ago, someone sent a packet of identity documents to the residential care facility where I was staying.”
“And a few pieces of paper convinced you that you’re Ethan?” I tightened my grip on my phone.
“The test results helped.” His right eyebrow lifted. “So did the look on your face when you saw me.”
The curtain shifted.
Sophie stood behind the window, watching us anxiously.
I moved to block his view.
“Stay away from her today.”
“All right.” He opened his car door, then looked back. “But why is that body wearing my wedding ring?”
I didn’t answer.
I waited until his car disappeared down the street before calling my lawyer, Marcus.
Two hours later, he was sitting at my kitchen table, studying the photograph.
“Don’t go to the woods, and don’t respond yet.” He set down my phone and looked at me. “First, we need to find out who sent it.”
“But the tests say he’s Ethan.” I pushed the report toward him.
Marcus turned to the page describing the reference sample.
His finger stopped.
“Look here.”
I leaned closer.
At the bottom of the scanned document was a line of text so small I could barely read it.
The tissue sample had been resealed three months ago.
Three months ago.
Again.
The hospital had kept that sample for twelve years. Why had it been resealed just as someone delivered his identity documents?
The next morning, Marcus and I went to the hospital.
The records supervisor reviewed our request, then slid the paperwork back across the desk.
“We’ll need a court order before we can release the complete chain-of-custody records.” She closed the folder.
“How soon could we get them?” I kept my hand on the report.
“Three business days once we have all the required paperwork.” She looked at Marcus.
Outside, Marcus told me to go home and wait for his call.
Instead, I drove to my art restoration studio.
Restoring old paintings had taught me to notice what had been cut away or covered up.
I laid the report beneath my magnifying lamp and took another look at the attached photograph of the sample’s seal.
Part of the lower-right corner had been cropped out, but a portion of a date was still visible.
It matched the date the sample had been resealed.
I called the testing lab. Five transfers later, I finally reached the employee who had received the sample.
“Was there any documentation showing that the seal had been replaced?” I asked, staring at the photograph.
Paper rustled on the other end.
“Yes. The hospital included a chain-of-custody note.”
“Why was it replaced?” I sat up straighter.
“The sample had been signed out. It was returned eleven days later and resealed.”
I tightened my grip on my pen.
“Who signed it out?”
“The signature’s hard to read.” He paused. “I can only make out the first initial. D. You’ll need to confirm the name with the hospital.”
I wrote the letter on a piece of paper.
For a long moment, my pen stayed there.
The sample had left the hospital.
If someone had switched it, that 99.99 percent match couldn’t prove the man standing in front of me was my husband.
It was dark when I got home.
Sophie was already asleep. I gently closed her bedroom door.
My phone vibrated.
An unknown number had sent me a video.
The woods.
Seven years ago.
In the pouring rain, I patted down the last shovelful of dirt, then dragged the shovel out of frame.
I braced a hand against the wall and kept watching.
The timestamp jumped ahead twelve minutes.
The freshly packed earth shifted.
Then a bloodied hand broke through the dirt.
My phone nearly slipped from my fingers.
Beneath the video was a single sentence.
Ethan wasn’t dead. You buried him alive.