Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEWRebecca Shaw refused to speak over the phone.
She sent one final message.
Police only. No Grant. No Keller. I have proof.
Detective Ortiz arranged for her to come to the hospital through a staff entrance that afternoon.
By then my contractions had eased.
The twins were still inside me.
Every additional hour felt like a victory.
Rebecca arrived wearing jeans, sneakers, and the hunted expression of someone who had spent months looking over her shoulder.
She was thirty-two, maybe thirty-three, with dark blond hair pulled into a knot and shadows beneath her eyes.
Detective Ortiz checked her identification.
Rebecca looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
Those were her first words.
Not hello.
Not an introduction.
I’m sorry.
I hated her immediately.
Then I hated myself for it.
“What did you do?”
Her eyes filled.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Then what are you sorry for?”
“I knew.”
My fingers tightened around the blanket.
“How long?”
“Six months.”
My voice cracked.
“I have been pregnant seven months.”
“I know.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Keller threatened me.”
Detective Ortiz intervened.
“Start at the beginning.”
Rebecca opened a canvas tote and removed a sealed flash drive.
“I was senior embryology technician at Mercer Reproductive Center.”
The clinic wasn’t named after Grant. Mercer was a coincidence—or at least I had always thought it was. The founder had been Dr. Walter Mercer, no relation.
Rebecca continued.
“Your retrieval produced eleven eggs. Seven fertilized. Three developed into viable blastocysts.”
I remembered every number.
I had written them in a notebook like scripture.
“And?”
“None of them were transferred.”
I closed my eyes.
I didn’t want to hear the rest.
But I had to.
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know.”
Rebecca swallowed.
“Your transfer was performed using two embryos created from your husband’s sperm and eggs belonging to another patient.”
Detective Ortiz asked, “Accidentally?”
Rebecca looked at me.
“No.”
The room suddenly felt too small.
“Who ordered it?”
“Dr. Keller.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know at first.”
She opened a folder.
Inside were photocopied lab sheets.
Two embryo identification numbers were circled.
“Those are the embryos inside you.”
I looked away.
“Who was the woman?”
Rebecca hesitated.
Detective Ortiz noticed.
“Ms. Shaw.”
“You need to understand why this is complicated.”
“I think attempted murder has already made it complicated.”
Rebecca took a breath.
“The eggs belonged to Vanessa Hale.”
I stopped breathing.
For a moment, I genuinely believed my heart had stopped.
No.
There were things a mind refused because accepting them would destroy the world as you knew it.
Vanessa.
My husband’s mistress.
The woman who pushed me down the stairs.
The twins inside my body were biologically hers.
“No.”
Rebecca slid another page forward.
“Vanessa underwent egg retrieval seventeen months ago under a different surname.”
“Why?”
“She froze eggs.”
“And Grant?”
Rebecca looked at Detective Ortiz.
“His sample was logged as intended for Mrs. Mercer’s cycle.”
The detective understood first.
“You’re saying someone intentionally combined Grant Mercer’s sperm with Vanessa Hale’s eggs.”
“Yes.”
“And then implanted those embryos into Claire?”
“Yes.”
I started shaking.
Dr. Singh stepped toward me.
“Claire, breathe slowly.”
I pulled away.
“Why would anyone do that?”
Rebecca’s silence answered before her words did.
Because Grant wanted it.
I remembered his excitement when our pregnancy test turned positive.
The nursery.
His hand on my stomach.
The names we discussed.
His insistence on choosing Keller’s clinic.
“Did my husband order this?”
“I never heard him say it directly.”
“Did you see him with Keller?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Several.”
“What about Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
“Together?”
Rebecca nodded.
Everything inside me went cold.
Detective Ortiz asked, “Why use Claire as the gestational carrier? Why not Vanessa?”
Rebecca looked miserable.
“I overheard enough to form a theory, but I can’t prove all of it.”
“Tell us.”
“Vanessa had severe uterine scarring.”
I remembered Grant once telling me Vanessa couldn’t have children.
He’d said it casually at a dinner when someone asked why she was single.
She had some health problems years ago. Kids aren’t in the cards.
Rebecca continued.
“She could produce viable eggs, but carrying a pregnancy would have been extremely dangerous.”
My hands moved over my belly.
“So I was their surrogate.”
No one answered.
“A surrogate who didn’t know she was a surrogate.”
Rebecca whispered, “Yes.”
I felt sick.
“Why not hire one?”
Detective Ortiz asked the same question.
Rebecca replied, “Money might be part of it.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Grant is worth seventy million dollars.”
“Not money for the surrogate.”
Rebecca looked directly at me.
“Money tied to your marriage.”
That caught Ortiz’s attention.
“What money?”
“I heard Keller and Grant arguing once. Keller said, ‘You told me the trust required biological heirs born within the marriage.’”
I stared at her.
Grant’s grandfather.
A real-estate empire.
A family trust I had never understood because Grant always said lawyers handled it.
One provision required married heirs before a distribution at age forty.
Grant turned forty in six months.
Detective Ortiz asked, “Biological heirs of Grant?”
Rebecca nodded.
“Apparently.”
My mind raced.
“If he divorced me for Vanessa before the babies were born…”
“He might lose eligibility,” Ortiz finished.
“So he needed me pregnant.”
Rebecca looked down.
“And he needed Vanessa’s biological children.”
I pressed my palm over my mouth.
I was not his wife.
I was infrastructure.
A womb.
A legal loophole.
“What would happen after they were born?”
Rebecca’s expression changed.
That scared me.
“What?”
“I heard Grant ask Keller whether postpartum complications would look unusual after a twin pregnancy.”
Detective Ortiz went very still.
“When?”
“Four months ago.”
My blood chilled.
Rebecca continued.
“Keller told him hemorrhage was one of the leading causes of severe maternal complications.”
I stared at her.
“Are you saying they planned to kill me after delivery?”
“I’m saying I heard a conversation that terrified me enough to copy files.”
Ortiz reached for the flash drive.
“What’s on this?”
“Appointment logs, altered embryo records, internal emails, medication orders, and two audio files.”
My heart slammed.
“Audio?”
“I started recording conversations after I realized what had happened.”
Detective Ortiz stood.
“We need to secure this properly.”
Rebecca nodded.
Then she looked at me.
“There’s something else.”
I almost laughed.
Of course there was.
“What now?”
“The embryos they implanted weren’t the only embryos created from Vanessa and Grant.”
I frowned.
“How many?”
“Five.”
My stomach tightened.
“Where are the other three?”
“Two remain frozen.”
“And the third?”
Rebecca’s face drained.
“That embryo was transferred eighteen months ago.”
“But I wasn’t—”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“Not to you.”
Detective Ortiz leaned forward.
“To whom?”
Rebecca whispered a name.
“Emily Rhodes.”
I had never heard of her.
“Who is Emily Rhodes?”
Rebecca looked at me.
“She was another patient.”
“Was?”
Rebecca nodded.
“She died after childbirth fourteen months ago.”
The room became silent.
“How?”
Rebecca’s voice dropped.
“Postpartum hemorrhage.”
Detective Ortiz picked up her phone.
And I knew before she said anything that my case had just become bigger.
Much bigger.
Because if Emily Rhodes had been carrying one of Grant’s children…
May you like
Then someone had already tested the plan on another woman.
And she hadn’t survived.
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