Chapter 6 - The Other Adrian
We did not take the highway to Bellweather.
Gideon drove an armored utility vehicle through the service roads behind my estate while I sat in the rear beside Adrian, whose wrists were secured to a steel ring.
Marissa stayed with police under protective custody.
Two protection dogs rode in the cargo section.
Atlas was already at the animal hospital.
I hated every mile that separated us.
Adrian hated being handcuffed more.
“You know this qualifies as kidnapping,” he said.
“You broke into my house.”
“I was invited to dinner.”
“Then you assaulted me.”
“Technicality.”
I turned my face toward him.
“Kick my dog again and I’ll introduce you to a technicality named Bruno.”
A low growl came from behind the partition.
Adrian went quiet.
Gideon almost laughed.
Bellweather Clinic had been abandoned for five years after a pharmaceutical fraud scandal. The original owner declared bankruptcy, and the building sat behind chain-link fencing in a warehouse district south of the river.
I remembered it as white walls, citrus disinfectant, soft voices, and the last place I had seen my mother’s face clearly.
That memory returned so suddenly I could almost see it.
Lillian standing beside a window.
Dark hair streaked with gray.
Green scarf.
Tears she tried to hide after a doctor said the injections were not working.
I had comforted her.
The thought now made me sick.
We parked two blocks away.
Gideon handed me an earpiece.
“Thermal shows three people at the south entrance. More inside.”
“Can we identify them?”
“No.”
Adrian said, “Take these cuffs off.”
“No.”
“You need me mobile.”
“I need you predictable.”
“If someone starts shooting, being attached to you is not predictable.”
He had a point.
I hated that.
Gideon removed one cuff and replaced the restraints with a short tether between Adrian’s belt and his own.
“Humiliating,” Adrian said.
“Survive it.”
We entered through a loading door whose lock had already been cut.
The smell hit me immediately.
Bleach.
Dust.
Old carpet.
And underneath it, something chemical.
My cane found tile seams I remembered from seventeen years earlier.
“This hallway leads to treatment rooms,” I said.
Gideon murmured, “You remember?”
“I remember places that hurt.”
We reached a set of double doors.
A speaker clicked on.
“Evelyn.”
My mother.
Real this time.
I knew from the tremor and the way she shortened the second syllable of my name.
“Mom.”
“Do not come farther.”
Adrian shouted, “Where are you?”
“Adrian?”
He stiffened.
“Yeah.”
Lillian began crying.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
The speaker went dead.
Adrian pulled against the tether.
“Mom!”
A door opened at the end of the hall.
Footsteps approached.
Slow.
Male.
No limp.
About six feet tall based on stride length.
Gideon raised his weapon.
“Stop.”
The footsteps stopped.
A man said, “You must be Evelyn.”
His voice was almost Adrian’s.
Not identical.
Older.
Rougher.
But close enough to make my skin prickle.
The Adrian beside me whispered, “What the hell?”
The stranger laughed.
“I was going to say the same thing.”
“Identify yourself,” Gideon ordered.
“My name is Adrian Reed.”
The man beside me went rigid.
“No, it isn’t.”
The stranger approached one step.
Gideon’s weapon clicked.
“Stay there.”
“Fine.”
I listened.
The new Adrian breathed through his nose like my brother did when angry. The resemblance could have been coincidence.
Then he said, “You still chew the inside of your cheek when you’re cornered, Evie?”
My heart stopped.
Only one person had ever teased me about that.
My brother.
When we were children.
But the man chained beside me knew it too.
“You’re lying,” my Adrian said.
The stranger answered, “When you were nine, you fell out of the sycamore tree behind Mom’s school. You lied and said you jumped. When you were twelve, you stole Dad’s Buick and drove it into Mrs. Harlow’s mailbox.”
My Adrian went white—I could hear it in his silence.
The stranger continued.
“When Evelyn was fifteen, she broke her wrist roller-skating. You slept on the floor outside her room because she was afraid the pain medication would make her stop breathing.”
I swallowed.
That memory had never been public.
I said, “Who told you that?”
“No one.”
“Then how do you know?”
“Because I was there.”
Adrian beside me exploded.
“No, you weren’t!”
Gideon pulled the tether tight.
The stranger said, “You’re not Adrian. Your name is Caleb Mercer.”
A silence so complete followed that I heard an overhead fluorescent light buzzing.
My Adrian whispered, “No.”
“Your mother was a nurse at Bellweather. She worked for Solomon.”
“No.”
“She swapped us after the fire.”
“What fire?”
“The adoption agency fire.”
I remembered the story. The agency that placed us both had burned down in 1992, destroying paper records from hundreds of closed adoptions.
The stranger continued.
“I was two. You were almost three. Your mother took me because Solomon’s people were looking for his son. She left you with the Vales under my name.”
“Why?”
“To hide me.”
“No.”
“Then she died.”
My Adrian’s breathing broke.
“Stop.”
“The Vales thought you were me.”
“Stop.”
“Lillian found out years later.”
“Shut up!”
He lunged.
Gideon caught him.
The stranger did not move.
I said, “If you’re really Adrian, prove it.”
“DNA.”
“Too easy to fake in this building.”
“What do you want?”
I thought of childhood.
One private thing.
Something even Lillian did not know.
“When I was eighteen,” I said, “the night before my first eye surgery, Adrian gave me something.”
Beside me, my brother whispered, “Evie.”
I kept going.
“What was it?”
The stranger answered instantly.
“A silver compass.”
My throat tightened.
“Inside the lid?”
He paused.
Then said, “No matter what goes dark, north stays north.”
My knees weakened.
That inscription had been between us.
Except there was a problem.
The man beside me had given me the compass.
I remembered his hands placing it in mine.
I remembered his voice.
His tears.
There was no way a different man had been there.
Unless he had been told.
Or unless my memory itself was incomplete.
The speaker crackled.
Noah’s voice came through.
“Evelyn, don’t believe him.”
Then a gunshot exploded from somewhere behind the wall.
May you like
My mother screamed.
I ran toward the sound.
