Jessie had spent most of her life believing there were two kinds of lies. There were the lies people told to take something from you, and the lies people told because they were afraid of what the truth might cost them. She had told both kinds herself, sometimes so convincingly that she could no longer distinguish one from the other. But as she sat in the passenger seat of Gabriel’s car, staring at the message from a woman who had been trained to wear her face, Jessie began to understand that the difference between those lies mattered far less to the people who had to live with their consequences.
Ask Catherine why she chose the real bullet.
The words remained on her phone long after the screen should have gone dark. She had read them so many times that they no longer seemed like a sentence. They were an accusation, a question, and a memory she wasn’t certain she could trust, all pressed into eight words.
Gabriel drove without speaking. The city moved around them in the ordinary way cities did after midnight, indifferent to the fact that Jessie had just been told her mother might have deliberately changed the ammunition in the gun she had used against Daniel Mercer twenty-four years earlier. A traffic light turned red. A bus pulled away from the curb. Somewhere beyond the windshield, people were going home from restaurants and late shifts, thinking about laundry, tomorrow’s appointments, and whether they had remembered to buy milk.
Jessie envied them with an intensity that surprised her.
“You’re doing it again,” Gabriel said eventually.
“Doing what?”
“Trying to solve the whole thing before you have all the pieces.”
“I’m trying to decide whether my mother arranged for me to shoot someone I loved.”
“Julia said Catherine changed the ammunition. She didn’t say Catherine intended for you to kill him.”
Jessie looked at him. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No. It’s supposed to remind you that we don’t know enough yet.”
She turned toward the window. Gabriel was right, which made him particularly irritating. He had become rather good at reminding her of things she would once have considered obvious when applied to anyone else’s problems.
“Daniel knew something about that gun,” she said. “Julia says he expected to survive. But he never told me.”
“Or he did, and Vale took the memory.”
Jessie considered that possibility. She remembered Daniel’s hand on her wrist, his face pale beneath the flickering emergency lights, and the terrible certainty that she had to pull the trigger or condemn him to something worse. She remembered the weight of the pistol and the way her entire body seemed to reject the decision even as she made it.
What she could not remember was checking the weapon.
That bothered her. She had handled firearms often enough during the years before she left her criminal life behind. Even at twenty, she had known the danger of assuming anything about a loaded gun. Yet her memory of that night contained no inspection, no questions, and no moment in which she considered whether Daniel’s plan was actually possible.
It contained only fear.
“There’s another possibility,” she said.
Gabriel glanced at her.
“Julia knows exactly what happened because she was part of the plan. She was wearing my jacket. She knew Daniel intended to survive. Perhaps she also knew what Catherine was doing.”
“And she waited twenty-four years to tell you?”
“Perhaps she wasn’t sure until recently.”
Gabriel nodded. “That’s worth asking her.”
Jessie looked down at her phone. Julia had not responded to her last message. She had stopped trying to force an answer, partly because the police were investigating and partly because she was beginning to suspect that every message Julia sent required a calculation about who might be watching.
For a woman who had once made a living by hiding in plain sight, Jessie found the situation uncomfortably familiar.
They reached the hotel shortly before one in the morning. Rebecca was waiting in the lobby with Michael, Rachel, Sophie, and Anna. The relief on their faces when Jessie and Gabriel entered was so obvious that Jessie felt a brief, unexpected ache. She had spent years making sure nobody knew enough about her movements to worry when she was late. Now six people had apparently been waiting to discover whether she had survived a drive across Hamilton.
It was inconvenient, but it was also rather wonderful.
Rebecca followed them into the small meeting room the hotel had made available after Gabriel explained that they needed privacy. Jessie suspected his explanation had been more convincing than hers would have been. Her own recent dealings with hotel staff tended to begin with apologies and end with questions about security cameras.
She played Julia’s video once for everyone.
Rachel covered her mouth when she saw the woman wearing her sister’s face. Sophie leaned forward, studying Julia with open fascination and discomfort. Anna went very still. Michael looked as though someone had opened a door inside his memory and left him standing at the threshold.
When Julia accused Catherine of changing the ammunition, Rachel shook her head.
“No,” she whispered.
Jessie stopped the video. “You don’t know that.”
“I know our mother.”
Jessie turned toward her. “Do you?”
The question hurt Rachel. Jessie saw it happen and wished she had chosen different words, but she couldn’t take them back.
Rachel folded her arms. “I know she’s lied. I know she’s manipulated us, and I know she has a talent for deciding what the rest of us can handle. But deliberately putting a real bullet into a gun meant to be used on Daniel?”
“That’s what we need to establish,” Rebecca said. “Not whether Catherine is capable of it. Whether she actually did it.”
Anna had been staring at the paused image of Julia.
“She looks more like Jessie than I remember,” she said.
Michael nodded. “The scar.”
“Yes. And something about her mouth. Vale used to complain that she smiled with too much of her upper lip showing.”
Jessie looked at her. “He complained about how a fifteen-year-old girl smiled?”
“He complained about everything that made her different from you.”
Anna reached for the glass of water beside her. Her hand trembled slightly.
“I remember her crying once because she’d laughed at a joke and Vale told her she’d done it incorrectly. Imagine that. A child being told even her happiness belonged to somebody else.”
Sophie looked back at the screen. “And now she’s trying to rescue people.”
“We don’t know everything Julia has done,” Rebecca cautioned. “But we know enough to treat her as a person, not a disguise.”
Jessie appreciated that. She had spent too much time wondering what it would feel like to encounter a stranger who knew how to wear her identity. She had not spent nearly enough time considering what it must feel like to have your own identity stolen before you had finished discovering it.
Rachel rose from her chair. “I’m calling Catherine.”
“Rachel—”
“No.” Rachel looked at Jessie. “You spoke to her. You asked questions. She found ways around them. This time she can answer me.”
Jessie studied her sister for a moment before nodding. Rachel had spent years protecting Sophie while believing Catherine was dead. She had borne the responsibility of knowing truths Jessie could not remember, and she had done it without the luxury of deciding whether she wanted that role. Whatever happened during the call, Rachel had earned the right to confront their mother herself.
She placed the call on speakerphone.
Catherine answered after the sixth ring.
“Rachel?”
“Julia sent Jessie a video.”
Silence.
“She says you changed the ammunition in the gun Daniel gave Jessie.”
Jessie heard a small sound on the other end of the line. It might have been Catherine sitting down.
“Is Julia safe?” Catherine asked.
Rachel closed her eyes. “That is not what I asked.”
“Rachel, please—”
“Did you change the ammunition?”
For several seconds, there was only the faint hiss of the telephone connection.
Then Catherine said, “Yes.”
Nobody in the room moved.
Jessie had expected anger when she finally heard the admission. Instead, she felt a strange and almost complete absence of sensation, as though her body had decided the truth was too large to receive all at once.
Rachel gripped the edge of the table. “Why?”
“Because Daniel was going to do something that would have exposed Thomas.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Daniel’s plan was to make Vale believe he had been killed. The gun was supposed to produce a convincing injury, but the ammunition he intended to use was not reliable. He believed it was safe enough. It wasn’t.”
Jessie frowned. “So you changed it to a real bullet?”
Catherine sounded suddenly older. “There was no safe version of that plan, Jessie. Not with the weapon he had, not at that distance, and not with the injuries he already had. I told him to abandon it.”
“But you still gave me a loaded gun.”
“I didn’t give it to you.”
“Then who did?”
Catherine hesitated.
Jessie felt the familiar anger begin to rise. “Answer me.”
“Michael brought it to Daniel.”
Michael looked up sharply.
“I remember giving him a gun,” he said slowly. “But I thought it was the one Daniel had prepared.”
“It was,” Catherine replied. “Before I changed the ammunition.”
Jessie stared at the phone. “How did you get access to it?”
“Daniel left it in the equipment room. I knew where he kept it.”
“And you changed it without telling him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Catherine took a long breath.
“Because Miriam Sloane had discovered the plan.”
Anna put down her glass.
Jessie felt the room shift around the name.
Catherine continued before anyone could interrupt. “Miriam knew Daniel intended to make Vale believe he was dead. She wanted the deception to succeed long enough to expose everyone involved, and she had already arranged for someone to collect him afterward. But she also wanted Daniel alive and under her control. The ammunition Daniel intended to use might not have stopped him convincingly. She gave me a choice: change it, or she would have Thomas taken before morning.”
Rachel stared at the phone in disbelief. “And you believed her?”
“Thomas had already been taken twice. I had no reason to think she was bluffing.”
“You had other choices,” Jessie said.
“I know that now.”
“No. You knew that then. You just didn’t know whether any of them would work.”
Catherine began to speak, but Jessie interrupted.
“Did Daniel know what you had done?”
“Not before you shot him.”
Michael covered his face with both hands.
Jessie looked at the envelope containing Daniel’s final letter. He had written that whatever happened after the fire was his choice. But this part had not been his choice at all.
“And when he survived?” she asked.
“I helped get him out. Miriam’s people never reached him. Thomas intercepted the vehicle.”
“Did Daniel know you changed the ammunition?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Catherine’s voice broke for the first time.
“He said I had made Jessie carry a terrible thing without giving her a choice.”
Jessie looked away.
“He was right,” Catherine whispered.
The admission should have satisfied something in her. It didn’t. Catherine had endangered Daniel, manipulated Jessie, and justified both decisions by insisting she was protecting Thomas. Perhaps Miriam had threatened her. Perhaps the danger had been real. But the people who paid the price had not been permitted to decide what risks they were willing to take.
“Did Daniel forgive you?” Rachel asked.
Catherine was silent for a moment.
“He never said he did.”
Jessie felt tears gather behind her eyes. Daniel had spent his life trying to protect people from the very kind of control Catherine had exercised. Even after surviving the fire, he had apparently refused to make the story easier for the woman who had betrayed him.
“There’s something else,” Catherine said.
Jessie almost laughed. There was always something else.
“When Daniel survived, he insisted that the truth be preserved. He wanted a complete account of the ammunition, the injuries, and Miriam’s involvement. Thomas helped him record it. That account is with the evidence they divided.”
“Where?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know which copy still exists. Daniel kept one. Thomas kept another. I had a third, but it disappeared.”
“Convenient,” Rachel said bitterly.
“No. It was stolen from me.”
“By whom?” Jessie asked.
“I believed Eleanor took it. But now I think Miriam may have.”
Jessie stared at the phone. “You thought Eleanor stole evidence implicating you, and you didn’t tell us?”
“I thought I could recover it before anyone else was hurt.”
Rachel let out a bitter laugh. “Mother, that should be written on your gravestone. Except, apparently, you don’t intend to stay in one.”
Nobody laughed.
Catherine accepted the remark in silence.
Jessie finally spoke. “You need to give a full statement to the police.”
“Jessie—”
“Not another private explanation. Not another letter hidden behind a drawer. A statement. With dates, names, and everything you can corroborate.”
“Miriam still has people working for her.”
“Then the authorities need to know who they are.”
Catherine’s voice hardened slightly. “You think I don’t understand the danger?”
“I think you’ve spent a lifetime deciding that understanding danger gives you permission to make everyone else’s choices.”
The words settled between them.
Jessie continued more quietly. “You taught me how to survive, Mother. You also taught me that love meant keeping secrets until the people you loved no longer knew what was true. I’ve spent twenty-two years trying to unlearn that. I’m not letting you teach it to me again.”
Catherine did not respond for several seconds.
Then she said, “You’re right.”
Jessie had imagined hearing those words from her mother many times. She had never expected them to sound so defeated.
“I’ll speak to the detective,” Catherine continued. “And I’ll bring the blackbird pendant.”
“Where?”
“To Hamilton.”
Rachel sat upright. “No. You’re not coming here and disappearing into another one of your secret arrangements. Give the detective your location. Let him coordinate it.”
Catherine sighed. “All right.”
“And Mother?” Rachel added.
“Yes?”
“If you’re lying about anything else, you need to tell us before somebody gets hurt because of it.”
The silence that followed was answer enough to make Jessie deeply uneasy.
Then Catherine said, “There’s one more person you need to know about.”
Jessie closed her eyes. “Who?”
“A woman named Helen Ward. She was Miriam’s assistant at the original institution near Montreal. Later she worked with the foundation under another name. Thomas believed she was keeping the Continuity files.”
“Where is she now?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know. But she contacted me three weeks ago and said Miriam was preparing to replace someone important.”
Jessie looked at the paused image of Julia.
“Replace whom?”
Catherine’s voice grew very quiet.
“Not you, Jessie.”
A cold silence filled the room.
“Who, then?” Jessie asked.
“Rebecca.”
Gabriel stood so abruptly that his chair scraped across the floor.
Rebecca stared at the phone. “Me?”
“Laura was Candidate Ten,” Catherine said. “Her daughter was never supposed to be part of the program. But Miriam became interested in Rebecca after she began investigating Second Life. She wanted to know whether the attachment patterns Vale studied could be reproduced across generations.”
Gabriel was already shaking his head. “Absolutely not.”
Rebecca reached for his arm. “Dad.”
“No. I won’t—”
“Dad, listen.”
She waited until he looked at her.
“I’m not a child. And we’re not going to help Miriam by panicking.”
Gabriel opened his mouth, then closed it. Jessie saw the effort it took him to step back and let his daughter speak.
Rebecca leaned toward the phone.
“Catherine, what do you mean by replacement? Are you saying someone has been trained to impersonate me?”
“I don’t know how far the process went. Helen believed Miriam had begun collecting photographs, recordings, and details of your professional work.”
“Do you have evidence?”
“Helen gave me a list of names. I can send it.”
“Send it to the detective, not just to me. And tell him exactly what Helen said.”
“I will.”
Rebecca sat back. Her face remained composed, but Jessie could see the strain around her eyes. Unlike Jessie, Rebecca had not grown up inside Vale’s system. She had built her career studying human behaviour because she wanted to understand it, and now that knowledge had drawn the attention of people who viewed understanding as a means of control.
Jessie reached across the table and placed her hand over Rebecca’s.
“We’ll take it seriously,” she said. “Without letting them decide how you live.”
Rebecca nodded gratefully.
Catherine remained on the line for several more minutes, answering questions about Helen Ward, the original institution, and the financial structure of Second Life. For once, Jessie noticed, her mother did not attempt to steer the conversation toward what she thought they should do. She answered what she could, admitted what she did not know, and agreed to provide the documents the detective requested.
It was a beginning.
It was not forgiveness.
When the call ended, nobody spoke immediately.
Michael was the first to break the silence.
“If Miriam was above Vale, then the candidate program wasn’t her only project.”
Anna nodded. “No. It was one part of something much older.”
Jessie turned toward her. “Tell us.”
Anna looked at the closed laptop in front of Rebecca, then at the photographs scattered across the table.
“The original institution wasn’t simply trying to make children obedient. That was how the work began. They wanted to understand whether people could be made to believe an attachment was their own, even when it had been arranged for them. Whether loyalty could be transferred. Whether grief could be redirected. Whether someone could be taught to trust a stranger more than their own memories.”
Jessie thought of Julia learning to smile like her, Evan believing she hated him, Michael remembering a betrayal he had never committed, and the years she herself had spent believing she had killed Daniel.
“They weren’t studying memory alone,” she said.
“No,” Anna replied. “They were studying identity. The kind people build through the people they love.”
Michael leaned forward. “And Thomas?”
Anna’s expression softened.
“Thomas was the first person Miriam couldn’t make stop loving someone who had been taken from him.”
“Catherine,” Jessie said.
“Yes. They told him his mother had abandoned him. They showed him documents. They made other people repeat the story. But he kept asking questions. He kept believing there was more to it.”
“Then he became the prototype.”
Anna nodded. “Miriam wanted to know why the conditioning wasn’t complete. Vale wanted to know how to make it work. Thomas spent years refusing to give them the answer they wanted.”
Jessie looked down at the photograph of her brother. She had only recently remembered him, and already she was discovering that his life had been shaped by a kind of courage she scarcely understood.
“What made him different?” Sophie asked.
Anna smiled sadly.
“I don’t think he was different. I think he had one small advantage. He remembered being loved before they told him he wasn’t.”
The words stayed with Jessie.
She remembered Thomas calling her little bug. She remembered the warmth of his arms when he returned home for that brief, precious night. She remembered how safe she had felt without knowing why. Somewhere in those memories was the boy who had spent years fighting to return to his family, and the man who had later risked everything to prevent other children from enduring the same thing.
Rachel wiped her eyes. “We need to find him.”
“We will,” Jessie said.
Rebecca opened her laptop again. “Then let’s work with what we can verify. Julia says Thomas is injured and Miriam has him. Catherine says Helen Ward may hold the Continuity files. We know Julia was near Dundas three days ago, and Martin Bell had connections to the foundation’s financial records. We need to establish how those facts connect.”
“Without guessing,” Michael added.
“Preferably,” Rebecca said.
For the next hour, they organized everything they knew into a timeline. Jessie was surprised by how much easier the task became when she stopped trying to arrange the facts around a single explanation. Julia could have helped Emily and Mrs. Alvarez without being completely trustworthy. Catherine could have been coerced by Miriam and still made a terrible decision. Daniel could have forgiven some people and refused to forgive others. Thomas could have spent years investigating the organization while keeping secrets that hurt his own family.
None of those contradictions required an immediate solution.
At three in the morning, the detective called.
“We’ve located someone who may be Helen Ward,” he said. “She’s living under the name Helen Price in Burlington. We’re arranging to speak with her.”
Jessie leaned closer to the phone. “Does she know you’re coming?”
“Not yet. We have reason to believe she’s been avoiding the foundation for some time. We don’t want to frighten her into disappearing.”
“Do you think she’s in danger?”
“Possibly. We’re taking precautions.”
He paused.
“There’s something else. We reviewed Julia’s video and the messages sent to Jessie. The person who sent the original threatening photograph may not be the same person who sent the later video.”
Jessie straightened. “Why?”
“The metadata and transmission patterns differ. That doesn’t establish identity, but it suggests the phone or account may have changed hands.”
“So someone sent threats from the impostor Nathan’s phone,” Rebecca said, “and Julia later used the same number?”
“That’s one possibility.”
Jessie thought of the messages: YOUR PEOPLE ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO CONTROL. THE OLD WOMAN BIT ME. COME TO HAMILTON. BRING THE LEDGER.
The language had been cruel, almost theatrical. Julia’s video, by contrast, had been urgent and direct. There was no reason to assume the same person had sent both.
“Mrs. Alvarez may really have bitten someone,” Jessie said.
Gabriel gave a tired laugh. “That would be the least surprising development of the night.”
The detective continued. “We’re also making progress on the van seen outside the apartment building. The registration was false, but we’ve recovered additional footage showing it entering a parking structure in the west end. Officers are following up.”
“Please tell me when you know they’re safe,” Jessie said.
“We will.”
When the call ended, Jessie looked around the room. Everyone was exhausted. Anna had fallen asleep in her chair, and Sophie’s head rested against Rachel’s shoulder. Michael sat with Daniel’s letter in his hands, staring at the lines as though searching for something the rest of them had missed. Rebecca was still typing, although her movements had grown slower.
“We need to sleep,” Jessie said.
Gabriel looked at her. “You first.”
She almost argued, then decided against it.
They agreed to stay at the hotel and keep their phones close. The detective had their room numbers and contact information. If Julia reached out again, Jessie would share the message before responding. If Catherine arrived in Hamilton, she would do so through arrangements with investigators, not through another private meeting. It was an unfamiliar way for Jessie to handle a crisis, but she was beginning to appreciate the strange relief of not having to be the cleverest person in every room.
She was halfway to her room when Michael caught up with her.
“Jessie?”
She turned.
“There’s something about Daniel’s letter.”
“What?”
Michael held out the page.
“I’ve read it three times. There’s a sentence that doesn’t sound like him.”
Jessie took the letter.
“If we can get it into the right hands, Second Life can become what your mother once wanted it to be.”
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.
“Daniel knew what Catherine wanted. He believed in helping survivors. But he didn’t believe Second Life could simply be repaired. Not after what Eleanor and Miriam had done with it.”
Jessie studied the sentence.
“Perhaps he changed his mind.”
“Perhaps. But Daniel was careful about the words he used when he knew someone else might read them.”
She looked up. “You think the letter contains a message.”
“I think he wanted you to notice something.”
Jessie read the passage again.
If we can get it into the right hands, Second Life can become what your mother once wanted it to be.
“What if he wasn’t talking about rebuilding the foundation?” she asked.
Michael considered that. “What else would he mean?”
Jessie looked at the page, then at the photograph of Thomas holding the small blackbird pendant.
“Second Life,” she whispered. “What if it wasn’t always the name of the foundation?”
Michael frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Catherine created Second Life to find Thomas. But Daniel said the foundation could become what Catherine once wanted it to be. Perhaps the original name referred to something else. A place. A plan. A record.”
Michael stared at her.
Then something in his expression changed.
“I remember a phrase,” he said slowly. “Thomas used it once when Daniel asked where he was keeping evidence.”
“What phrase?”
“‘The first life was the lie. The second is where the truth lives.'”
Jessie felt a small chill.
“Did he explain it?”
“No. Daniel laughed and told him he sounded like a poet. Thomas said he was being practical.”
Jessie almost smiled. That sounded like the brother she was beginning to remember.
“Ask Rebecca to add it to the notes,” she said. “We’ll see whether it connects to anything.”
Michael nodded, but he didn’t leave.
“Jessie, when we find Thomas, I don’t know what he’ll think of me.”
She looked at him.
“I spent years believing I betrayed him. Even after learning I helped him escape, I can’t stop wondering whether he remembers the boy who told Vale about his plan.”
Jessie considered her answer carefully.
“You did tell Vale,” she said. “And you went back to help Thomas escape. Both things happened.”
Michael looked down.
“Vale made sure you remembered only the first part. That doesn’t mean the second part cancels it out. But it belongs to you too.”
He swallowed.
“I don’t know if Thomas will forgive me.”
“Neither do I. That’s his decision.”
Michael nodded slowly.
“But he should get to make it knowing what really happened.”
For the first time that night, Michael smiled.
“Daniel would have liked that answer too.”
Jessie gave him a tired look. “Apparently I spend a great deal of time saying things my dead boyfriend would have approved of.”
Michael laughed softly.
“He would have hated being called that.”
“Dead?”
“Boyfriend.”
Jessie laughed despite herself, and the sound surprised them both.
After Michael left, she stood alone in the hallway for a moment, holding Daniel’s letter. The laughter faded, but the warmth of it remained. She had forgotten what it felt like to speak about him without the conversation ending in guilt.
She hoped she would have more opportunities.
In her room, Jessie set the letter on the bedside table and finally took off her shoes. She was too tired to sleep immediately. Her mind continued moving through photographs, recordings, missing people, and contradictory stories, searching for a pattern that might explain everything.
She thought of the blackbird pendant hidden at Catherine’s cabin. She thought of the childhood rhyme and the wooden bridge in Julia’s photograph. She thought of Miriam Sloane, a woman whose name had existed at the edges of the story until suddenly appearing at its centre.
Then she remembered something Anna had said.
Vale didn’t train Julia alone.
Jessie reached for her phone and opened the image of Julia standing outside the grocery store in Dundas. She enlarged it carefully, studying the woman’s posture, her hands, and the way her dark hair fell across her forehead.
Julia resembled Jessie so completely that the differences seemed almost impossible to see.
But one difference remained.
Jessie had a habit of standing with most of her weight on her right foot. She had developed it after an injury years earlier, long after St Catherine’s burned. Julia stood the same way.
Jessie frowned.
The scar above Julia’s eyebrow could have been deliberately reproduced. Her hairstyle and clothing could have been copied from surveillance photographs. But a posture shaped by an old injury would be harder to imitate without sustained observation.
Someone had been studying Jessie’s movements recently.
Not twenty-four years ago.
Recently.
She looked again at the note on the photograph taken in the park.
Replacement confirmed. Subject remains unaware.
What if those words did not mean Julia had successfully learned to impersonate Jessie?
What if they meant someone else had been substituted somewhere in Jessie’s life?
Her heartbeat quickened.
She thought of Nathan Carter and the man who impersonated him at the hospital. The ease with which records had been altered. The way the organization seemed capable of putting one person in another’s place without anyone noticing until the damage was done.
She thought of Mrs. Alvarez, Emily, Gabriel, Michael, Rebecca, and the people she had come to trust.
Then she forced herself to stop.
That was what Miriam wanted. Fear without evidence. Suspicion spreading from one relationship to another until Jessie could no longer trust anyone.
She placed the phone facedown.
Whatever the note meant, she would not let it turn everyone she loved into a suspect.
At 4:26 in the morning, her phone rang.
Jessie reached for it with a groan, expecting Rebecca or the detective.
The number was unfamiliar.
She answered.
“Jessie Wilson?”
The voice belonged to a woman. Older, perhaps, with a low, controlled tone and the faintest trace of a French accent.
“Who’s calling?”
“My name is Helen Price. You may know me as Helen Ward.”
Jessie sat upright.
“How did you get my number?”
“Thomas gave it to me.”
“Where is he?”
A pause.
“That’s why I’m calling.”
Jessie swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Are you safe?”
“No. But I have a little time.”
“Then call the police. They’re already trying to find you.”
“I know. I saw their car outside.”
“Are you refusing to speak with them?”
“I’m deciding whether I can trust them.”
Jessie closed her eyes. The last thing she needed was another person convinced that avoiding investigators was the safest possible option.
“Helen, if Thomas gave you my number, he should also have told you that I don’t work for Miriam. I don’t work for Vale, and I’m not going to help you disappear.”
“I know who you are, Jessie.”
There was something in the woman’s voice that made Jessie pause.
“You knew me?”
“I knew the girl they called Candidate Nine. I knew the woman Vale intended to replace. And I knew Julia before they made her wear your face.”
Jessie held the phone more tightly.
“Then you know what happened to her.”
“Some of it.”
“Where is Thomas?”
Helen took a slow breath.
“Thomas found the original records. The ones Miriam believed were destroyed. He was going to give them to Daniel, but Daniel died before the transfer could be completed.”
Jessie’s stomach tightened.
“That was twenty-three years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because Thomas spent those years trying to find the rest. And last week, he finally did.”
Jessie stood.
“Where are the records?”
“They aren’t paper, Jessie. Not anymore. Thomas digitized what he could and distributed copies through people he trusted. But Miriam kept the original source material. The recordings, the medical files, the consent forms that were never signed, the financial agreements.”
Jessie felt sick.
“Where?”
Helen hesitated.
“There’s a building in Hamilton. It used to be a private clinic. It closed years ago, but the foundation still owns the property through another company.”
“Give me the address.”
“I will. But you need to understand something first.”
Jessie looked toward the window, where the faintest suggestion of dawn had begun to lighten the sky.
“What?”
“Miriam isn’t trying to create another Jessie.”
Jessie went still.
“Then what is she trying to do?”
“She’s trying to prove that she can replace someone without changing their face.”
The words settled slowly.
Jessie thought of memory suppression, fabricated loyalty, and the countless ways Vale had altered people’s understanding of themselves. She thought of Michael remembering a betrayal that never occurred, Evan believing Jessie hated him, and Julia spending years learning to become someone else.
“Through memory,” she said.
“Through memory. Through relationships. Through the stories people are made to believe about who they are.”
“And Rebecca?”
Helen’s voice grew quieter.
“Rebecca found the one thing Miriam cannot afford to have exposed.”
“What?”
“The original reason Laura was chosen as Candidate Ten.”
Jessie felt a coldness spread through her chest.
“What reason?”
“Laura wasn’t chosen because of Gabriel. She was chosen because Miriam believed she carried something Thomas needed.”
Jessie frowned. “What?”
“A memory.”
“Of what?”
Helen took a shaky breath.
“Of the night Daniel Mercer died.”
Jessie closed her eyes.
For a moment, the entire room seemed to disappear.
“Laura was there?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“She was seventeen when she became a candidate. By the time Daniel died—”
“She was older, Jessie. She was no longer a child, but Miriam still considered her part of the study. Laura saw what happened at the clinic. She saw who was with Daniel, and she heard what he said before he died.”
Jessie could barely speak.
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know all of it. Miriam took Laura’s recording before I could make a copy. But Thomas told me Daniel left a message for you.”
Jessie looked at the letter on her bedside table.
“What message?”
Helen’s voice broke slightly.
“He said, ‘Tell Jessie the second life was never supposed to be hers alone.'”
Jessie stood motionless.
For years, she had believed the secrets surrounding St Catherine’s were about her. Her missing memories. Her guilt. Her past. But every new revelation had led outward, toward people who had been forgotten, erased, or made to carry terrible things in silence.
Thomas. Evan. Julia. Laura. Michael. Anna. Daniel.
The names formed a pattern she had been too frightened to see.
“Jessie,” Helen whispered, “there’s something else. I need you to listen carefully.”
“I’m listening.”
“Miriam has Thomas, but she doesn’t have Julia. And Julia has something Miriam wants more than the ledger.”
Jessie gripped the phone.
“What?”
“The original recording of Daniel’s final conversation.”
Jessie’s breath caught.
“Julia has it?”
“She does. And she has spent twenty-three years trying to decide whether giving it to you would save you or destroy you.”
Jessie looked toward the dark window.
“I think I should get to decide that.”
Helen was silent for a moment.
Then, very quietly, she said, “That’s what Thomas told her.”
A sound came through the phone. A door opening, followed by footsteps.
Helen stopped speaking.
“Helen?”
“I have to go.”
“Give me the address of the clinic.”
“I’ll send it to the detective. He’ll have it before you wake up.”
“Wait. What about Thomas?”
Helen’s breathing quickened.
“He’s alive. Miriam needs him alive until she finds out what he did with the evidence.”
“And Emily? Mrs. Alvarez?”
“Julia moved them because she discovered someone inside the foundation had orders to take them. She has a safe place, but Miriam is looking.”
Jessie closed her eyes in relief, although she knew the danger was far from over.
“Helen, please stay on the line. Let me connect you with the detective.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because the person standing outside my door has already found me.”
There was a sharp sound, like something striking wood.
Helen whispered one final sentence.
“Jessie, ask your mother whose name was on Daniel’s death certificate.”
Then the line went dead.
Jessie stood frozen for half a second before calling the detective. She gave him everything she could remember, including Helen’s name, the circumstances of the call, and the sound she had heard before the connection ended. Within minutes, officers were being sent to the address associated with Helen Price. Rebecca and Gabriel were awakened. The others gathered in the hallway as Jessie explained what had happened.
But one question remained lodged in her mind, refusing to loosen its grip.
Whose name was on Daniel’s death certificate?
Jessie had spent twenty-four years mourning a man whose death had been concealed, revised, and used as a weapon against her. She had finally learned that Daniel survived the fire and lived for months afterward. She had been told he died after an incident at a private clinic. She had been told Thomas and Catherine were present.
Now Helen had suggested that even the official record might contain another lie.
Rebecca opened her laptop and began searching through the documents they had already obtained. The detective promised to verify any available death registration through lawful channels, but cautioned that records connected to the organization might be incomplete or falsified.
Jessie listened, nodded, and tried not to let hope become another form of self-deception.
Daniel had left recordings. He had written letters. People remembered his final days. There was evidence he had died.
But there was also a woman who had spent decades turning truth into whatever served her purposes.
And until Jessie saw reliable evidence, she would not allow herself to believe either the most comforting story or the most terrible one.
Gabriel stood beside her as morning light crept across the hotel curtains.
“You’re thinking he might still be alive,” he said quietly.
Jessie looked at him.
“I’m thinking someone went to a great deal of trouble to make sure I never knew exactly how he died.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”
She picked up Daniel’s letter and folded it carefully into its envelope.
For the first time, she was beginning to understand that the greatest theft in her life had not been the memories Vale took from her. It had been the certainty that she had no right to question the story she had been given.
Miriam Sloane had built an empire around controlling what people believed about themselves. Catherine had spent decades withholding truths because she feared what her children might do with them. Daniel had tried to leave behind enough evidence that Jessie could eventually choose for herself.
And somewhere in Hamilton, Thomas Wilson was still fighting to finish the work he had begun as a frightened boy who refused to believe his mother had abandoned him.
Jessie looked toward the window, where the city was beginning to wake.
She had once thought redemption meant finding a way to live with everything she could not undo.
Now she understood that sometimes it meant something much more difficult.
It meant refusing to let the people who hurt you decide what the rest of your life would mean.
And before the day was over, Jessie intended to find out whose death had been recorded in Daniel Mercer’s name.
Come back tomorrow for the next part
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