Chapter 10 - The Lawyer’s Second File.
Rebecca did not deny being in Portland.
That was what unsettled Grant most.
When he brought her upstairs and placed the hotel record on the nursery desk, she looked at it once and sat down.
Sebastian stood near the window.
Evelyn remained hidden in the adjoining dressing room with Mara, listening through the partially open door.
Grant did not like using his wife as a secret witness.
Evelyn had insisted.
Rebecca folded her hands.
“You found Anna Reed.”
Grant studied her.
“You know that name.”
“Yes.”
“You stayed in the room beside her.”
“Yes.”
“You told me today that you suspected Evelyn was alive twenty-six days ago.”
“Yes.”
“You did not tell me that at the same time you were meeting a hidden Hawthorne relative connected to the DNA used in Evelyn’s death certificate.”
Rebecca’s face remained composed.
“When you say it that way, it sounds terrible.”
“Find another way.”
She exhaled.
“Eleanor contacted me.”
“Why?”
“Because Evelyn had given her my name.”
Sebastian stared.
Grant’s voice sharpened.
“When did Evelyn meet Eleanor?”
Rebecca looked toward the closed dressing room door.
“She did not.”
Grant noticed the glance.
Rebecca already suspected Evelyn was nearby.
He did not acknowledge it.
“Explain.”
“Six months ago, Evelyn asked me to locate any living people connected to old Hawthorne medical trusts.”
“Why?”
“She had found unusual requests inside Meridian’s archive.”
“For Eleanor’s records.”
“Among others.”
Grant frowned.
“What others?”
Rebecca opened her briefcase slowly.
“Before I show you, I need you to understand why I withheld this.”
Grant felt his patience thinning.
“Every person in this house apparently has a noble explanation for lying to me.”
“This one is not noble.”
Rebecca looked directly at him.
“I was afraid.”
The honesty changed the room.
Grant waited.
Rebecca removed a sealed folder.
“Eleanor contacted me after Victor Lang approached her.”
“Why you?”
“Because I had sent her a letter months earlier asking whether she would speak with Evelyn about family medical records.”
“Did she respond then?”
“No.”
“But after Victor found her, she called.”
“Yes.”
Rebecca met Eleanor at the Portland hotel.
Eleanor refused to visit a law office or use her real name.
She was fifty-six, lived alone, and had spent decades moving whenever the Hawthorne name appeared too close to her life.
She told Rebecca that Victor’s questions frightened her, especially when he asked whether she had ever given birth.
“Did she?” Grant asked.
Rebecca’s expression changed.
“Yes.”
Sebastian gripped the windowsill.
“A daughter?”
“Yes.”
“What is her name?”
“Eleanor refused to tell me.”
Grant looked toward the dressing room.
The woman in the car could have been Eleanor’s daughter.
“Is she alive?”
Rebecca lowered her eyes.
“Eleanor did not know.”
Sebastian turned sharply.
“How can a mother not know?”
“Because the child was adopted at birth.”
The room went silent.
Rebecca continued carefully.
“Eleanor was twenty-two, alone, and completely cut off from the family.”
“She gave the baby up,” Sebastian whispered.
“Yes.”
“Did our father know?”
“She believed he did.”
Sebastian looked sick.
Grant asked, “What is in the folder?”
Rebecca opened it.
Inside were two sets of records.
The first concerned Eleanor’s hospitalization after childbirth.
The second was a private adoption file that had been partially unsealed through a court petition decades later.
The infant had been born female.
The adoption name was redacted.
The adoptive parents were listed only by initials.
One later amendment contained a new surname.
Lang.
Grant stared at it.
Sebastian whispered, “No.”
Rebecca nodded grimly.
“The child appears to have been adopted by relatives of Victor Lang.”
Grant felt the whole case shift again.
“Victor knew Eleanor’s daughter.”
“Very likely.”
“Who was she?”
“I do not have a first name.”
Grant looked at the paper.
A child born to Eleanor Hawthorne and raised within the Lang family.
A woman genetically close to Eleanor.
A woman whose body could be misidentified using Eleanor’s sample.
Evelyn stepped out of the dressing room.
Rebecca did not appear surprised.
Sebastian did.
“You were listening?”
Evelyn ignored him and looked at Rebecca.
“You knew there was another woman.”
Rebecca stood.
“I knew there might be.”
“You let me believe the body could be some random stranger.”
“I did not have proof.”
“You had enough to go to Portland.”
“I went because Eleanor was terrified.”
“So was I.”
Rebecca’s composure finally cracked.
“I thought you were dead when I went there.”
Evelyn stopped.
Rebecca’s eyes filled.
“I opened your contingency letter because I believed I had failed you.”
The anger in Evelyn’s face softened slightly.
Rebecca continued.
“Eleanor contacted me the same night.”
“Why did you not tell Sebastian?” Grant asked.
“Eleanor begged me not to.”
Sebastian looked wounded.
“She called me later anyway.”
“Yes, after I convinced her Victor was more dangerous than old family shame.”
Grant walked to the fireplace.
“Who told you to come here today?”
Rebecca hesitated.
Evelyn noticed.
“Rebecca.”
“A man called my office from a blocked number.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘The child saw the dog. Go to Hawthorne House before seven.’”
Mara stepped out behind Evelyn.
“The child means Lucy.”
“Yes.”
Grant’s expression hardened.
“Voice?”
“Older male.”
“Cole?”
“Possibly.”
“Sebastian?”
“No.”
Sebastian looked almost offended.
Rebecca continued.
“The caller knew about Bruno.”
Evelyn looked at Grant.
“Cole.”
“Unless Victor knew the dog survived.”
Grant checked his phone.
Victor had not called back.
Elias had already dispatched two trusted contractors to watch Victor’s known residence and the private airfield.
No movement yet.
Grant pointed to the adoption record.
“We identify Eleanor’s daughter.”
Rebecca nodded.
“The unsealed file has a court docket number.”
“Can you get the full record?”
“Not tonight through normal channels.”
Grant looked at her.
“I am not asking you to break the law.”
“Good, because I would have charged extra.”
Evelyn almost smiled.
Grant realized he had missed the way the two women spoke to each other.
For a brief moment, the room felt like the old world.
Then Elias entered carrying a sealed evidence bag.
“We found something in Trent’s locker.”
Inside was a photograph of a woman in her late thirties.
Dark hair.
Sharp eyes.
She stood beside Victor Lang at a company holiday event.
On the back was written one name.
Claire Lang.
Rebecca stared.
“That could be Eleanor’s daughter.”
Grant looked at Elias.
“Who is Claire Lang?”
“Victor’s niece.”
“Alive?”
Elias’s expression darkened.
“She disappeared eleven weeks ago.”
Evelyn’s face changed.
“That was before my crash.”
“Yes.”
“Was she reported missing?”
“Quietly.”
“Meaning?” Grant asked.
“Her family told police she had a history of leaving without notice.”
Rebecca looked at the photograph.
“What did she do for work?”
Elias answered.
“She was compliance director at Meridian Clinical Systems.”
The room went silent.
Grant stared at Claire’s face.
A compliance director connected to Victor.
A possible secret Hawthorne descendant.
A woman missing before Evelyn’s crash.
The body in the car no longer looked like a convenient substitution.
It looked like the end of another investigation.
Evelyn whispered, “She found the same thing I did.”
Grant felt certain she was right.
Elias’s phone vibrated.
He looked at the message.
“Victor’s house is empty.”
Grant turned.
“What about the airfield?”
“His jet is fueled.”
“Departure plan?”
“Filed for Montreal in forty minutes.”
Grant reached for his coat.
Evelyn stepped in front of him.
“You are not going without me.”
“You were nearly killed because of this.”
“So were you.”
“That is different.”
Her eyebrows rose.
Grant heard how the sentence sounded.
“It is not different,” Evelyn said.
“No.”
“Good.”
Sebastian picked up his cane.
“I am coming too.”
Grant stared at him.
“No.”
“I have known Victor longer than you have been alive.”
“That is precisely why you are staying.”
Sebastian’s expression became icy.
“You do not command me.”
“Inside this house, tonight, I absolutely do.”
Mara spoke from the doorway.
“Someone should probably stay with Lucy.”
Every adult stopped.
The simplicity of the statement cut through the argument.
Sebastian looked at Mara.
Then at Grant.
“Fine.”
He sat back down with offended dignity.
“I will protect the child.”
Mara shook her head.
“No, I will protect the child.”
For the first time all night, Evelyn laughed.
It was quiet and brief.
Grant looked at her.
The sound nearly broke him again.
Then Elias received another message.
His face hardened.
“The jet just changed destination.”
“To where?”
“Portland.”
Rebecca whispered, “Eleanor.”
Grant was already moving.
Victor was not running away from the mystery.
He was flying directly toward the one person who could expose its beginning.
After Claire’s photograph emerged from Trent’s locker, Mara asked a question everyone else had overlooked.
“Why would Trent keep it?”
Elias examined the print.
“If he were trying to hide her, he would destroy it.”
Grant nodded.
“If he were investigating her, he would store it securely.”
Rebecca turned it over again.
The name CLAIRE LANG was written in blue ink, but a second impression appeared beneath it.
Someone had written on a sheet placed above the photograph.
They shaded the paper lightly with a pencil.
A partial sentence appeared.
IF SHE CONTACTS EH, REPORT TO RC.
Evelyn frowned.
“EH could be me.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“Or Eleanor Hawthorne.”
RC could mean Raymond Cole.
Or, as they later discovered, a room code.
The ambiguity mattered.
Grant realized the conspirators relied on initials because initials created multiple plausible explanations.
Even if one page leaked, no one could immediately tell whether it referred to a person, a room, or an account.
Elias placed the photograph in an evidence sleeve.
“Trent may not understand what he was carrying.”
Grant looked toward the guest office where the guard was being held.
“Then someone used him the same way they used everyone else.”
Mara’s expression hardened.
“That does not make him innocent.”
“No.”
Grant nodded.
“It makes him useful.”
That distinction would later help break Edmund’s network.
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People who participated without understanding the whole system could still reveal how instructions traveled.
THE WOMAN BEHIND THE GLASS
