Chapter 5
Noah was supposed to be placed with Mara that evening.
Ryan knew it.
Police surrounded her building and found the front door open.
Inside, someone had arranged photographs of me across the living room floor.
Pictures from college.
Pictures from my first job.
Pictures taken years before I met Ryan.
At the center was a photograph of another woman.
She looked enough like me to be my sister.
Her name was Emily Carter.
She had dated Ryan before me.
Emily disappeared seven years ago.
The police had considered Ryan a person of interest, but Diane gave him an alibi. No charges were filed.
Mara found a memory card taped beneath her kitchen table.
The card contained videos of Emily recorded without her knowledge.
In one clip, Ryan asked if she wanted children.
In another, Diane criticized her health, family history, and temper.
It sounded like an interview.
Then came the final video.
Emily stood in a parking lot, shouting at Ryan.
“You don’t love me,” she said. “Your mother chose me because I look like Melissa.”
Ryan grabbed her arm.
Emily pulled away.
“If you come near me again, I’ll tell the police everything.”
The recording ended.
Melissa agreed to speak with detectives after learning about Emily.
She claimed she never wanted Noah stolen.
Diane had told her I was a willing surrogate who changed her mind after accepting payment.
“Why did you hide?” I asked when she entered the interview room.
“Because Ryan said you attacked Mom and threatened to kill me.”
She looked exhausted.
“I believed him until I saw the kitchen video on the news.”
“How did the news get it?”
“I sent it,” Mara said.
She had released a short copy before Ryan could erase the truth.
Within hours, the story spread across the country.
But public attention created a new problem.
People began arguing over whether I was a victim or an unstable mother who had agreed to an illegal adoption.
Ryan released a video from an unknown location.
He looked frightened and heartbroken.
“Claire planned everything,” he told the camera. “She took the money, then attacked my mother when we tried to stop her from backing out. I deleted the security footage because she had edited it.”
He held up medical records claiming I had suffered psychotic episodes.
The records carried my doctor’s signature.
Comments flooded the internet.
Some supported me.
Others called me dangerous.
Someone posted the hospital’s address.
Elena demanded that Noah and I be moved.
Before the transfer, Dr. Patel entered my room with two security officers.
“There is a problem,” she said.
A toxicology test had found a sedative in Noah’s blood.
I nearly stopped breathing.
“I never gave him anything.”
“I believe you,” Dr. Patel said. “But we need to know who did.”
The medication could cause extreme crying as it wore off.
Diane had not simply waited for Noah to become upset.
She had drugged him to create the crying that would begin her performance.
Hospital records showed that Ryan had collected a prescription for the same drug two weeks earlier.
It had been prescribed by a doctor named Paul Mercer.
Mercer had also signed the psychiatric records Ryan displayed online.
Police went to his office.
It was empty.
Computers were gone.
Patient files had been burned in a metal trash can behind the building.
But one document survived.
It was a handwritten list of four women.
Emily Carter was first.
My name was third.
The second woman, Julia Kent, had died in a car accident five years earlier.
The fourth name belonged to a pregnant woman named Sophie Lane.
Her due date was six weeks away.
Police reached Sophie’s house just before dark.
She was missing.
Her husband said she had left with her prenatal nurse.
The nurse called herself Melissa Hale.
Melissa stared at the detective.
“That’s impossible. I have never met her.”
Then Elena’s phone rang.
A patrol officer had found Ryan’s car near the state line.
May you like
There was blood on the driver’s seat.
And in the trunk, they found Sophie’s hospital bag.
