Chapter 10 - The Physician's Second Face.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Elena remembered Dr. Pierce covering the hidden phone with his hand.
She remembered the key he slipped beneath her palm.
She remembered his warning that the safe had been opened.
Everything had looked like help.
Now every gesture looked different.
Nathan reached for his phone.
"He's been our doctor for twenty years."
Ruiz's voice remained hard.
"Do not call him."
"We need to find him before he knows Caleb survived."
Nathan lowered the phone.
Vanessa looked pale.
"Daniel never trusted Pierce."
Elena turned toward her.
"But Pierce knew about the hidden camera."
"He knew about my padded cardigan."
"He knew the safe had been opened."
Ruiz replied.
"Which suggests he wasn't merely observing Daniel."
"He was observing us."
Elena's mind returned to the hospital arrival.
Pierce had appeared at the mansion before the ambulance.
Nobody had called him in front of Elena.
"Who called Pierce after I fell?" she asked.
Nathan frowned.
"I assumed Mom did."
Margaret reentered the room at that moment.
She heard the question.
"I didn't call him."
Nathan stared at her.
"Helen?"
Margaret shook her head.
"Helen called the ambulance."
Elena looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa slowly shook her head too.
"Not me."
Cold spread through the room.
Pierce had known the fall would happen.
Perhaps before Vanessa did.
Ruiz spoke quickly.
"Elena, ask Margaret how long Pierce has treated the family."
Margaret answered herself.
"Since before Nathan was born."
"His father treated Robert before him."
Ruiz went silent.
Elena understood why.
"The DNA question."
Margaret lowered herself into the chair.
"What DNA question?"
Nathan looked toward his mother.
There was no gentle way to say it.
"Daniel believed Dad wasn't his biological father."
Margaret's face lost all color.
"Where did you hear that?"
Vanessa answered.
"From Daniel."
Margaret stared at her.
Then she whispered.
"Samuel."
Nathan stepped closer.
"Mom?"
Margaret looked at Elena rather than her son.
"Before I married Robert, Samuel Pierce and I were together."
Elena felt the room shift again.
Margaret continued with visible effort.
"It ended before the wedding."
"Months before."
"But Daniel was born early."
Nathan's voice was barely audible.
"Did Dad know?"
"He suspected."
Margaret's eyes filled.
"We never tested."
"Samuel begged me not to."
Ruiz spoke from the phone.
"Then Dr. Pierce may have believed Daniel was his son for decades."
Margaret covered her face.
Elena finally understood the doctor's strange protection.
He was not protecting Elena.
He was protecting the secrets around Daniel.
Nathan's jaw tightened.
"Why would he attack Caleb?"
Vanessa answered first.
"To get the DNA report before Daniel saw it."
Elena nodded.
"If the report proved Pierce was Daniel's father, it could destroy him professionally and personally."
"If it proved Robert was Daniel's father, Pierce would lose the fantasy he had protected for decades."
Ruiz said quietly.
"Either way, he had motive to take it."
A nurse entered with Elena's discharge paperwork.
"Your obstetrician is comfortable sending you home with strict rest and follow-up."
Nathan almost laughed from disbelief at the timing.
Elena took the papers.
"We're not going home."
The nurse blinked.
"Where are you going?"
Elena looked at Vanessa.
"Somewhere Dr. Pierce thinks nobody knows about."
Vanessa understood immediately.
"Daniel's old lake house."
Margaret rose sharply.
"Absolutely not."
Elena pointed toward the brass key.
"If Pierce took the bag, Daniel will hunt him."
"If Daniel believes Pierce has the report, he'll go somewhere tied to their past."
Margaret shook her head.
Pierce's betrayal hurt Nathan differently from Daniel's.
Daniel had been absent long enough to become a family myth.
Pierce had remained.
He attended birthdays.
He sat beside Margaret after Robert's funeral.
He examined Elena during a pregnancy scare when Nathan was out of state.
He had been trusted precisely because nobody imagined a family doctor could be part of a corporate conspiracy.
Ruiz ordered officers to Pierce's clinic and home.
Both were empty.
His office computer had been wiped less than an hour earlier.
His passport was gone.
Yet the photograph sent to Nathan showed Pierce tied inside the lake house.
Elena enlarged the image on her phone.
"Look at his wrists."
Nathan leaned closer.
The rope appeared tight, but Pierce's hands were positioned comfortably.
There was no visible redness.
"He might not actually be restrained," Elena said.
Ruiz agreed.
"Could be theater."
Vanessa stared at the photograph.
"Daniel loves theater."
Elena looked at her.
"You sound like you know him well."
"I know the version he wanted me to know."
Vanessa pointed toward the window behind Pierce.
"That is the north room."
Margaret recognized it too.
The lake house had belonged to Robert's father before Howard Industries existed.
It was remote enough to hide someone for days and familiar enough that Daniel could move through it blindfolded.
Ruiz spread photographs across the conference table.
"We treat the invitation as a controlled contact."
Nathan shook his head.
"Elena isn't going."
Elena did not look at him.
"Daniel asked for me."
"You're pregnant and were pushed down stairs today."
"Which is why he thinks I'm frightened enough to follow instructions."
"You are not bait."
"No."
Elena met his eyes.
"I'm the person he believes has the deed."
Margaret surprised everyone by siding with Elena.
"If Daniel thinks she has it, sending anyone else may cause him to leave."
Nathan stared at his mother.
"You cannot be serious."
"I am serious enough to know your brother."
Margaret's face tightened.
"Daniel never walks away from something he believes belongs to him."
Ruiz refused to make the decision until Elena's obstetrician cleared her for a short monitored trip.
The doctor was furious about the idea but confirmed the baby remained stable.
Elena signed a refusal of continued observation against medical advice.
Nathan watched her sign.
"You always do this."
"Do what?"
"Turn fear into a task list."
Elena paused.
"Would you prefer I turn it into screaming?"
"I'd prefer you admit you're scared."
She looked down at her stomach.
"I'm terrified."
The answer softened him instantly.
"Then don't go."
"Being scared doesn't make staying safer."
Nathan had no response.
Ruiz outfitted Elena with a transmitter beneath her collar and a nearly invisible earpiece.
Vanessa offered to accompany her because Daniel expected to see them together.
Ruiz objected.
Elena accepted.
"If Vanessa runs, arrest her," Elena said.
Vanessa gave a faint, bitter smile.
"Fair."
"If she warns Daniel, arrest her."
"Also fair."
"If she touches me near another staircase, arrest her twice."
For the first time all day, Nathan almost laughed.
The moment lasted less than a second.
Then Ruiz received a forensic update from Pierce's clinic.
Investigators found prenatal vitamins in a locked cabinet labeled with Elena's name.
The pills were not the brand prescribed to her.
Some capsules contained a sedative.
Others contained a drug that could cause dangerous changes in blood pressure during pregnancy.
Nathan went completely still.
Elena felt cold spread through her hands.
She had stopped taking those vitamins two weeks earlier because the capsules smelled different.
At the time, Pierce blamed a manufacturing change.
Now she understood.
The staircase had not been the first attempt to end her pregnancy.
It might only have been the most visible one.
Ruiz closed the evidence report.
"We are no longer going to the lake house to negotiate for a document."
His voice hardened.
"We are going to identify everyone involved in an attempted homicide conspiracy."
Elena touched the transmitter beneath her collar.
The controlled fall had exposed more than Vanessa's lie.
It had opened a door into a plan that had begun long before anyone laid a hand on her.
Ruiz quietly replaced every member of the Howard private security detail before the lake operation began.
He no longer trusted any access list created by the family.
Elena agreed.
The greatest advantage Daniel had possessed was not money.
It was familiarity.
The toxicology report on the altered vitamins arrived while Ruiz prepared the lake operation.
The dosage was inconsistent from capsule to capsule.
That suggested the goal had not been a predictable poisoning.
It had been uncertainty.
A dizzy spell on the stairs.
A fainting episode while driving.
A blood-pressure crisis that could be blamed on pregnancy.
Pierce had been designing accidents.
Vanessa's shove had simply given Daniel a more direct opportunity.
Elena sat with that realization until rage became strangely quiet.
Nathan wanted to destroy the clinic with his bare hands.
Elena wanted something more useful.
"Freeze every account Pierce can access," she told Ruiz.
"Already happening."
"Pull every prescription he wrote for Margaret too."
Margaret looked up sharply.
Elena did not apologize.
"If he altered mine, we check yours."
The older woman nodded after a moment.
Two of Margaret's medications were immediately taken for testing.
The conspiracy had turned the family doctor's medicine cabinet into another crime scene.
"The lake house was sold years ago."
Vanessa whispered.
"No."
Everyone turned.
"Daniel bought it back through a shell company last year."
At that moment, Nathan received a photograph from an unknown number.
It showed Dr. Pierce tied to a chair inside the lake house.
Behind him stood Daniel Howard.
The message beneath it contained only one sentence.
May you like
BRING ELENA, OR THE DOCTOR DIES.
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