Chapter 7 - THE BROTHER NO ONE MENTIONED
Ethan read the note three times.
“My father had one son.”
Claire shook her head.
“That is what you were told.”
Detective Ruiz searched archived family records.
The official Hawthorne biographies listed Ethan as the only child of Victor and Amelia Hawthorne.
Older newspaper photographs told a different story.
One image from thirty-four years earlier showed Victor beside a pregnant Amelia.
A young boy stood between them.
The caption identified him as Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The child disappeared from all public records two years later.
Ethan stared at the photograph.
“I have a brother.”
Claire sat beside him.
“Your father called him Nathan.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was sent away.”
“Why?”
“Your father would not tell me.”
Detective Ruiz opened another document.
Nathaniel Hawthorne had been declared dead at age twelve after a private plane crashed over Lake Superior.
No body had been recovered.
Ethan remembered Eleanor’s words during the call.
Claire always was more intelligent than you.
It sounded less like an insult and more like a message to Julian.
“Could Nathan be alive?”
Claire nodded.
“Your father believed he was.”
Detective Ruiz enlarged the photograph of the false police officer who had disappeared from Claire’s hospital detail.
Martin Vale had dark hair, a narrow face, and pale gray eyes.
Ethan looked at the childhood photograph.
The same gray eyes stared back at him.
“Martin is Nathan.”
“Or someone who wants us to believe that.”
Ruiz checked the traffic cameras from Baltimore.
The sedan used in the shooting had been abandoned near an industrial park.
Inside the trunk, police found a Hawthorne Security uniform and a bloodstained bandage.
No body was found.
Ethan received another message.
It contained an address in Vermont and a time.
Midnight.
Below the address were five words.
Come alone or lose them both.
Claire read the message.
“Both means Sophie and your father.”
Detective Ruiz shook her head.
“You are not going alone.”
“They will see police coming.”
“We can approach without being seen.”
Claire looked at the address.
“It is not the clinic.”
Ethan opened a map.
The location belonged to an abandoned train station five miles south of the property.
“It’s a trap.”
“Yes.”
“I’m still going.”
Claire stood.
“So am I.”
Ethan faced her.
“You can barely walk.”
“You cannot ask me to stay behind while our daughter is held by the woman who imprisoned me.”
Their eyes locked.
For the first time since Claire returned, Ethan saw the woman he had married beneath the fear and exhaustion.
She had not survived eighteen months by waiting for someone to rescue her.
Detective Ruiz reluctantly agreed to let them participate under surveillance.
They drove north as evening fell.
Snow began near the Vermont border.
At eleven forty-five, Ethan and Claire entered the abandoned station.
The building was empty.
A single lamp burned near the old ticket counter.
Sophie’s rabbit sat beneath it.
Claire ran forward.
The rabbit was connected to a small speaker.
Eleanor’s recorded voice filled the station.
“You were always predictable, Ethan.”
Metal shutters slammed over the doors and windows.
Gas began pouring from the ceiling vents.
Claire covered her mouth.
Ethan rushed toward the exit.
The doors would not move.
Through the thickening cloud, a figure appeared behind the glass of the old ticket booth.
He wore a police jacket.
He raised a pistol.
Claire pulled Ethan down.
The man fired at the ceiling control panel.
Sparks exploded.
The ventilation system stopped.
He broke the booth window and climbed through.
Ethan stared at him.
“Martin Vale?”
The man removed the police cap.
“My name is Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
May you like
He looked at Claire.
“And Eleanor just took your daughter somewhere none of us were supposed to find.”
