Chapter 4

Footsteps raced down the hallway. There were more than one pair.

Richard let go of Margaret's hand, straightened up, and turned toward the delivery room door.

The door burst open. The first man through wore a military coat. He was in his fifties, with a hard, unyielding face. His name was John Carter, head of security at the base.

Behind him came two men in civilian clothes. And behind them, flanked by two guards, walked a woman in a black wool coat.

She looked about forty. Her hair was curled, her makeup smeared, but her eyes were still sharp and cold.

I knew her. She was George's daughter-in-law and Hannah's grandmother.

In my previous life, she had shoved me into a sack with her own hands and watched her men throw me into the river. Her name was Emily Quinn.

Now, as the guards led her into the delivery room, her eyes swept over Richard, then over Mary lying on the floor, and stopped on Hannah in the crib. Her lips twitched, but she said nothing.

Richard looked at her. "Did George send you?"

Emily lifted her chin. "Mr. Sinclair, I have no idea what you're talking about. I came to visit a friend at the hospital. Your men stopped me at the back door."

Richard pointed at Hannah. "Whose child is that?"

Emily's gaze flickered. "What child? I don't have a child with me."

From the floor, Mary spoke up. "It was her! She gave me the baby. She told me to take the Sinclair daughter and put this one in her place. She paid me fifty thousand dollars."

Emily looked down at Mary. Her stare was so cold that Mary's voice died in her throat.

John stepped forward. "Take them away. Question them separately."

*****

The interrogation took place at the base security office and lasted all night. Mary broke first. She confessed everything.

Three months earlier, Emily had reached out to her through a middleman. She gave Mary seven thousand dollars up front and promised another thousand when the job was done.

The job was simple. On the night the Sinclair daughter was born, Mary should swap the babies while the delivery room was empty.

Mary had worked at the military hospital for twelve years. She knew when the shifts changed, what kind of locks were used, and where the cameras didn't reach. She had prepared a spare key in advance.

"Did you arrange the phone call that lured Mr. Sinclair out of the room?" John asked.

Mary nodded. "I had my cousin make the call. He works in the headquarters communications office. I told him it was a joke."

"And who called Zoe?"

"Emily arranged that. She knows the director's secretary."

John handed Richard the statement.

Richard read it and said nothing. He set the paper down and walked out.

Out in the hallway, he lit up a cigarette.

I remembered my brother mentioning this later.

That night, my father went through an entire pack of cigarettes. He stood in the hallway outside the security office for forty minutes without saying a word.

Then he put out the last cigarette, walked back into the interrogation room, and said to John, "Investigate George. Start from the beginning."

Emily was much tougher than Mary. They questioned her for two days, but she never broke. She didn't say a thing.

She stuck to her story that she had only been passing by. She said she didn't know Mary, and she had nothing to do with the baby.

But the evidence didn't lie. Hannah's blood type didn't match anyone in the Sinclair family.

Mary's bank account showed a seven-thousand-dollar transfer. The money came from a business account registered to Emily.

In the back seat of Emily's car, the police found a baby carrier, two cans of formula, and a note that read, [Third floor, east side, second room. Maternity ward.]

On the third day, the military disciplinary committee got involved.

On the fifth day, George was called in for questioning.

The seventy-two-year-old man walked into the disciplinary committee's office leaning on his cane.

He sat down, took a sip of coffee, and smiled. "This is a misunderstanding. My daughter-in-law didn't know what she was doing. I'll take responsibility."

Richard wasn't there, but one of his friends was. He passed George's exact words to Richard.

My father only said, "This isn't over."

Over the next twenty years, every member of the Quinn family would learn exactly how heavy those words were.

But that story came later. For now, I was still a baby.