My Husband Says I Died Three Years Ago
A TaleDale Story · Story concept by Nora Ashwick
Nobody entered the van.
For a moment we formed a silent circle beneath the freight yard, each of us measuring the others. Chen still held her weapon. Gabriel held the capsule reader. Anna's coat concealed the identity papers she had risked everything to recover. Celeste wore my face. Julian knew where the church vault was.
Any one of them could be Henry.
Including the man beside me.
I hated how quickly suspicion replaced intimacy. An hour earlier, Julian's hand had felt like the one fixed point in a life stripped of names. Now I studied the line beside his mouth and wondered whether it belonged to the boy in our wedding photographs or to an older man who had learned his son's expressions. The network did not merely forge records. It made trust feel foolish.
Julian saw the thought arrive. "Pull my face if you want."
"A good mask doesn't peel from the chin," Gabriel said. "There are adhesives, subdermal anchors, dental pieces. A proper examination takes time."
"We have twelve minutes," Chen replied.
I watched the tablet. Catherine remained beneath the bell while Vivian's guards searched the stone floor. If she was North, she had manipulated us, stolen the key, and then warned us about Henry. It could be true. It could also be a way to split us before we arrived.
My suppressed self had said to trust Celeste and Anna. She had said nothing about Julian, Gabriel, or Chen.
"Anna comes with me," I said. "Celeste too."
"And the rest of us?" Julian asked.
"Stay three steps away."
Pain crossed his face, but he obeyed.
We took the van. Chen drove according to the marked route while Gabriel searched the reader for the flood protocol. The city passed in empty industrial blocks, wet with recent rain. St. Orison stood four miles away, its bell tower visible between warehouses.
"Found something," Gabriel said. "The flood protocol duplicates protected accounts into a public-benefit trust before cancellation. But it requires two biometric confirmations. Iris and Elena Vale."
"Elena is dead," Celeste said.
"Her tissue isn't."
That was why the body had been preserved. Not merely as proof of an old crime, but as a permanent biological key.
"Vivian built the network on her daughters," Anna said. "One dead, one renamed."
"And Celeste's face can fool the camera," I said, "but not a tissue scanner."
Gabriel enlarged the protocol. "The second sample must be viable DNA. Bone marrow, tooth pulp, preserved blood."
The van swerved. Chen caught the wheel and apologized, but I had seen her eyes in the mirror. She was not surprised by the requirement.
"How long have you known?" I asked.
"Known what?"
"That the body opens the system."
"I didn't."
Anna leaned forward and removed a compact pistol from Chen's waistband before she could react. Celeste pulled the wheel straight. Julian pinned Chen's right arm against the seat.
Chen's left hand struck Julian's throat with sudden precision.
The van crossed a lane. Gabriel grabbed the brake. We stopped inches from a concrete barrier.
Chen twisted free and kicked open the driver's door. I caught her collar. The skin at the back of her neck stretched without wrinkling.
Gabriel drove a medical probe beneath the edge.
Chen screamed.
The face came loose at the temple.
Beneath it was an older man with gray brows and a burn running from his ear into his hairline. Julian stared at him as though childhood had risen from a grave.
"Dad?"
Henry Mercer stopped fighting.
So Catherine had told the truth. The false Henry at the freight office had been Catherine wearing her husband's remembered face. The man who arrived as our investigator had been Henry wearing Chen's.
"Where is the real Detective Chen?" Anna demanded.
"Alive," Henry said. His voice no longer carried Chen's clipped authority. "Sedated in Gabriel's clinic. I replaced her after she stepped away to call the precinct at the freight yard."
Gabriel recoiled. "You used my clinic?"
"Your security is sentimental."
Julian dragged him out onto the wet road. "You watched me bury you. You watched Mom disappear. You let me believe I had no one."
Henry looked at his son without apology. "I let you live."
I retrieved the capsule reader. Nine minutes remained.
"Why does Catherine want the body?"
"She doesn't. She wants Vivian to believe she does. Catherine is buying you time."
"Then why infiltrate us?"
"Because your flood protocol contains a defect. It will save the protected identities, but it will also send the criminal ledger to a private recipient."
"Who?"
Henry looked at Anna.
She raised the pistol, her hand steady.
"Don't," Julian warned him.
"The recipient is Anna Cross," Henry said. "Not this woman. The real one."
Anna's expression did not change.
Then Lucy's voice came through the van's rear speaker.
"Mom?"
Anna turned toward the sound.
Henry smiled.
"That," he said, "is not your daughter."