Chapter 4 - The Nurse
“Nora?” Emily shouted. “Nora, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Ethan called back. The number went straight to voicemail.
Margaret grabbed her purse.
“Move.”
Ethan stepped in front of her. “You know her.”
“I know hundreds of people.”
“Then you won’t mind waiting for the police.”
Margaret’s face hardened. “You are making a mistake you cannot undo.”
Emily pressed a hand to her belly. The baby kicked hard.
“Ethan, let her go.”
He looked shocked. “What?”
“She wants us focused on her. I want to find Nora.”
Margaret gave Emily a small, measuring look.
Emily hated that look more than the slap.
Ethan opened the door. “Get out. But if you contact Emily again, come near this house, or touch anything connected to our child, I will bury you in restraining orders.”
Margaret stepped into the hall, then turned.
“You think marriage makes you a team,” she said. “Fear will show you what you really are.”
The door slammed behind her.
Within twenty minutes, Ethan had found an address for Nora through the mobile nursing company. He and Emily drove there despite his protests that she should stay home.
“I’m not sitting in that house wondering what happened to her,” Emily said.
Nora lived in a small apartment complex near the interstate. Her front door was open.
Ethan told Emily to stay behind him.
Inside, a lamp had been knocked over. A chair lay on its side. Blood marked the edge of the kitchen counter.
“Nora?”
A weak sound came from the bedroom.
They found her sitting on the floor, pressing a towel to a cut above her eyebrow.
“Oh my God,” Emily said.
Nora looked terrified. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Who did this?” Ethan asked.
“A man I didn’t know.”
“What did my mother pay you to do?”
Nora started crying.
“She paid me five thousand dollars to collect your wife’s blood and label it as part of a research panel. She gave me a DNA sample she said was yours.”
“My toothbrush,” Ethan said.
Nora nodded.
“And the test?” Emily asked.
Nora looked at her.
“The lab didn’t produce the result Margaret wanted.”
Emily frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The baby matched Ethan.”
Relief hit Emily so fast her knees almost gave out.
“But Margaret told me to destroy the report,” Nora continued. “Then she asked if I knew someone who could make a new one.”
Ethan’s face went cold.
“Who?”
Nora opened her mouth.
Headlights swept across the bedroom wall.
A black SUV stopped outside.
May you like
Nora went white.
“That’s him.”
