Chapter 6 - The Lake House
Glass cracked beside my ear.
The airbag exploded into my chest.
For one second, everything turned white.
Then sound rushed back in.
A horn.
Rain.
Someone shouting through broken glass.
I tasted blood where my teeth had cut the inside of my lip.
My car had clipped the concrete barrier at an angle, spun, and stopped against a guardrail instead of going through it.
The driver’s door would not open.
A man in a raincoat pulled the passenger door wide.
“Ma’am, can you move?”
I looked down at my legs.
“Yes.”
“Then get out.”
I crawled over the console.
My knees hit wet pavement.
I stayed there long enough to breathe.
My phone lay under the brake pedal.
The screen was shattered but alive.
One message waited.
PETER: Did you get the key somewhere safe?
I stared at it.
Then I laughed once.
The man in the raincoat looked at me like I might be in shock.
Maybe I was.
Police arrived within eight minutes.
The officer who looked under the hood did not diagnose anything. He just stood up, wiped his hand on a towel, and told me not to drive the car even if it started.
A tow technician arrived and crouched beside the front wheel with a flashlight. He did not make a formal finding either, but he looked at the officer and said, "This needs a forensic inspection."
That was enough.
I gave the officer Peter's name, Lukas's name, the clinic, and the threat to Clara. For the first time, the story sounded dangerous even when spoken out loud to someone who did not know us.
At the hospital, Owen appeared before the nurse finished taping a small cut near my eyebrow.
“You are done doing things alone,” he said.
“I wasn’t alone. I had a concrete barrier.”
He did not smile.
The police arranged to have the car inspected.
Owen arranged a rental under his firm’s account.
I arranged nothing.
For the first time in forty-eight hours, I let someone else decide where I sat and how I got there.
Then I took the brass key from my coat pocket.
“We are going to the lake house.”
Owen closed his eyes.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Your car may have been tampered with.”
“Which is why whoever did it thinks I’m either dead or in a hospital bed.”
Owen stared at me for a long second, then called the detective and left a detailed voicemail with the lake-house address, the key, Peter's name, and the fact that we were going there.
"If this becomes evidence, somebody else needs to know we didn't invent the location afterward," he said.
He looked at the key.
“That logic is offensive.”
“It is also useful.”
We arrived at the Hartmann lake house just after midnight.
The property sat north of the city behind bare trees and a black iron gate.
Peter had given me the gate code years ago for family weekends.
It still worked.
The house was dark.
A motion light snapped on when we crossed the gravel, and I nearly turned back. Then it shut off by itself, leaving our reflections floating in the black windows.
No cars.
No exterior lights except one yellow bulb over the garage.
Owen called a private investigator he trusted and kept him on the phone while we entered.
The utility room smelled like dust and lake water.
The safe was exactly where Peter said it would be.
Behind the water heater.
The brass key fit.
Inside were three binders.
A flash drive.
And a white envelope with HELENA written across the front.
“Too neat,” Owen said.
I opened the first binder.
Clinic invoices.
Payments to Clara.
Payments to Westbridge.
A consulting retainer to Dr. Keller.
Every payment came from PHR Consulting.
The second binder contained photocopies of embryo inventory sheets.
Four stickers were attached to one page.
EV-14-01.
EV-14-02.
EV-14-03.
EV-14-04.
My throat tightened.
Westbridge had told me only two embryos remained after the retrieval.
Then they said both failed.
Four stickers meant four tracked embryos.
Owen touched the page with one finger.
“Do not remove anything.”
A floorboard creaked above us.
We both froze.
The house had been empty when we entered.
At least it had sounded empty.
Another creak.
Closer.
Owen stepped in front of me and reached for his phone.
The utility-room light went out.
Darkness swallowed everything.
I heard breathing.
Not Owen’s.
A voice whispered from the doorway.
“Do not call the police yet.”
Owen raised his phone flashlight.
A woman stood ten feet away.
She looked exhausted.
Late forties. Scrubs under a winter coat. Hair pulled into a loose knot.
She lifted both hands.
“My name is Nina Cole.”
I knew the name.
Clara had mentioned an embryology coordinator who suddenly disappeared from Westbridge.
Nina looked at the open safe.
“You found Peter’s box.”
“Peter said it belonged to Helena,” I said.
“Peter says many useful things.”
Owen moved slightly to block the doorway.
“How did you get in?”
“I have been here two days.”
“Why?”
“Because Keller told me there was a warrant for my arrest.”
Owen frowned. “There isn’t.”
“I know that now.”
Nina stepped closer.
She had a bruise along one wrist, yellow at the edges. When Owen asked about it, she said Keller had grabbed her three nights earlier after catching her copying a file. She had left the clinic through a loading dock and never gone home.
She looked at the four inventory stickers.
Then at me.
“You were told two embryos survived to storage, correct?”
“Yes.”
“That was false.”
My fingers curled against the edge of the safe.
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Where are they?”
Nina pointed to the stickers.
“Fourteen-zero-three is Clara’s pregnancy.”
I waited.
“Fourteen-zero-four is still frozen under an alias at a satellite facility.”
“And the other two?”
Her eyes moved to Owen, then back to me.
“Fourteen-zero-one failed.”
My mouth went dry.
“After what?”
“A transfer.”
“To whom?”
She hesitated.
“Someone selected by the Hartmann family.”
I could hear the lake hitting the retaining wall outside.
“What about fourteen-zero-two?”
Nina’s face changed.
May you like
She reached into her coat and pulled out a folded lab sheet.
“Evelyn,” she said, “Clara is not the first woman we transferred one of your embryos into.”
