Chapter 25: Chapter 25
Chapter 25
As soon as Michael arrived we headed straight to my office. Being my assistant he knew I didn’t want him wasting his time making small talk.
The second we were in my office he handed me a tablet and opened his laptop open on my desk.
I sat down behind my desk and he stood behind me.
"Where’s Miss Lewis?" Michael asks.
"I think she’s resting in her room. Amelia stopped by..." I didn’t explain. I didn’t need to with Michael.
He looks toward the door nodding. "It’s best you see this before she does..." he says softly.
The tone he used and the way he said it had my stomach twisting.
"Let’s see what you have?" I ask.
He opens his tablet for me.
At first I didn’t know what I was looking at.
"I started with Amy Duncan." He says softly.
I gritted my teeth. The woman has been on my mind all week long. It’s been bothering me all damn week.
The woman hasn’t stopped calling Carly since she found out Carly was staying here. The way she’d told Carly I was a part of the damn mafia. What did she take me for a damn street thug?
Did the woman know Carly was my daughter’s mother? Is that way she tried to isolate Carly from my family. None of it sat right with me.
"What am I looking at exactly?" I ask him.
His expression darkens. "Nothing." he says softly.
I frown. "What do you mean nothing?"
"I mean Amy Duncan doesn’t exist before six years ago." He says. "Amy Duncan started working at Northwestern Hospital six years ago. Three years before Miss Lewis’ accident."
I stare at him for a second. Waiting for him to clarify what the hell he was talking about.
He didn’t though he just stared right back me.
"What the fuck does that mean?" I ask.
Michael pages on the tablet to where her employment history is. "Amy Duncan appeared out of nowhere six years ago, her employment history, shows she comes from New York. Her medical records, tax records and even her addresses are all fake. I did a deep dive even looked into her medical history seeing if I could link it onto anyone else. But nothing. I saw she added Miss Lewis onto her insurance. It seems the only thing Amy has done has been to protect Miss Lewis."
"Let’s say that it’s possible she knew Carly would be in a accident and she was supposed to help Carly get back on her feet. Why go through the trouble of keeping her away from me?" I ask.
"The time Miss Duncan arrived at the hospital would be around the time Miss Lewis would have met you..." He says.
My stomach twists at the thought. "You think she was put here to keep an eye on me?" I ask.
"It’s just a thought. What if Miss Lewis wasn’t supposed to be in that accident?" he asks, taking the seat across from me. "On the drive here I kept thinking why would Miss Lewis make it a point to open a safety deposit box the same day she dropped Stella off with you. What if her memory loss wasn’t due to the accident but an experimental drug or something and she was coming back to Stella but was hurt on her way to you?" He asks.
"That’s impossible isn’t? Taking something like that is dangerous..."
He nods. "Of course it is. So I looked into Miss Lewis and Miss Duncan’s history. Miss Duncan has been giving Miss Lewis some sort of medication not on her file and Miss Lewis stopped taking them a while ago. Also it’s just a theory I can’t prove since I couldn’t find anything on Miss Lewis either. It’s likely Carly Lewis is an Alias she’s used in the past..." He says. "I looked further into Miss Duncan too."
I looked up. "What did you find?" I ask. Hoping for something more than theories. This time.
"Someone built Amy Duncan around Miss Lewis."
I didn’t know what to say. I have more questions than answers now. Where were my fucking answers?
Normal people didn’t appear out of nowhere. Only people who had something to hide or had secrets. It seemed like both Carly and this Amy woman was trained to hide in plain sight. And Carly not taking the medication anymore would explain her extreme migraines she’s get after trying to remember something.
Michael leaned back in his chair. "Whoever she is, Amy Dunkin isn’t her real name. I’d warn Miss Lewis to stay away from her if I were you..." He says.
I stare at the tablet deep in thought.
Everything about this woman rubbed me the wrong way and I’ve never even met the damn woman. She reminds me too much of my ex wife.
Every answer I’ve received I somehow had ten more questions for.
"So basically you got me more questions than answers?" I ask.
Michael laughed humourlessly. "I thought the same thing, the entire week I worked on this..."
I rubbed a hand across my face in frustration. "What else do you have for me?"
Michael’s expression shifted slightly. "About five years ago, this was about four months before Stella was dropped off at the office. Someone broke into your apartment in New York. I don’t know if you remember but the security company called and told you nothing was missing..." he tells me.
I try to recall, it was a vague and distant memory. I wasn’t sure if I really did remember or not.
"So you think that’s how Carly got my DNA? From something in that apartment?" I ask.
He nods. "Yes. I do..."
He fiddles on his laptop and turns it to face me and then pressed play.
It looks a like it was taken on a phone, the couple is taking a video of themselves in front of Cole’s company. "What is this?" I ask looking at him.
"Don’t look at the couple. Look at the background..." He says.
I do exactly that. There are people entering and exiting the building.
That’s when I a woman appeared on screen.
My breath caught.
She had black hair loose, with a black baseball cap pulled low over her face and black clothes on.
I would have missed her if it wasn’t for the pink blanket in her hands.
I still had that pink blanket in the back of Stella’s closet. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.
I watched Carly look around before she entered the building. Everything about what she was doing screamed I didn’t want to be recognized.
If you had shown me this video a year ago, hell even a month ago. I wouldn’t recognize her. She was so different from the Carly I know now. She held herself in a way that showed she loved to stay in the shadows. The Carly I know wasn’t meant for the shadows. Yet there are times when she sinks into the background like she’d done it her whole life.
I paused the video.
I stared at Carly trying to convince myself it wasn’t her. But I knew it was her. Every fibre of my being screamed it was her.
A part of me wondered who she was before she became Carly Lewis. I leaned forward wondering if I should show this to Carly.
I leaned forward.
Something about the way she held Stella in her arms, told me she loved my daughter.
I un paused the video.
Another video popped up from another angle. This time from inside the building when she dropped Stella off. I watched as she hesitated before handing her to the receptionist.
I watched her disappear before the video cuts.
"If she was in the building how come the security footage never picked her up?" I asked.
"I think Carly might have had help. She got someone to wipe any footage with her in it."
My blood ran cold. "What exactly was Carly involved in?" I ask.
The video ended and I stared at Michael in disbelief.
"Jesus."
Michael nodded. "She looks like she didn’t have a choice. It was why I didn’t want to discuss this over the phone."
"What else did you find?" I ask.
Michael reached into his briefcase and took out a document and slid it across the desk to me.
"This is where things get interesting." he says.
I took it.
Read the first page.
Then looked at the picture on the second page.
Then on the third page my eyes widened.
"There’s no way..."
Michael nods.
"Yeah."
Seven years ago. In Russia Carly and I stayed at the same hotel together.
Carly and I had been in the same city, in the same hospital, in the same ward, right next to one another, at the same time.
Michael continued. "You were stationed there for a mission when your team was ambushed you managed to get away. You couldn’t remember what happened that night and you woke up in the hospital and the guys chasing you were never found again..."
I remembered that day, I had a scar on my stomach from the gunshot.
I barely remembered getting attacked. I was told by my father when I woke up. It had been so long since that incident it was a distant memory in my mind.
"The name was different. The name on her hospital records was Lisa Anward. I looked into the name another dead end. She suffered from burns and gunshot wounds and stayed in the hospital for a month before she disappeared. If it wasn’t for the picture I wouldn’t have recognized her."
My gaze dropped back to the picture it was taken with her in the background she looked angry. She was speaking to a man in the background of the picture.
"Do you know who the man is?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "When I tried looking him up in the system my access was revoked and it nearly sent a warning through the system. Another reason I wasn’t using my computer to show you."
I looked at him. "Do you think Carly was put near me on purpose?" i ask.
He shakes his head. "Carly looks more lost than anyone. Though I’m not sure if the kidnapping case was to bring the two of you together. I’m looking into that again..." He tells me.
"How?" I ask. Was my daughter a pawn in whatever Carly is wrapped up in?
Michael shrugged. "Still working on that. It just that everything fits too nicely in a box. It was setting off alarms in my head."
I looked down at a photograph again.
Carly had blonde hair in this picture. Was blonde her natural hair colour?
My chest tightened. "Could Carly have been shot by he people chasing after me?" I ask him.
He shakes his head. "No. Different calibre bullet. Unless they had different guns to the ones who shot you. Plus she was shot with at least three different guns." he says.
"Damn..." I couldn’t help but curse. She survived that?
What the hell was the mother of my daughter mixed up in? And would this come and bite me in the ass later on?
