TEN DAYS TO SAVE THE MERCER TWINS

The emergency lights should have come on within two seconds.

They did not.

That told me the outage was not weather, not a utility failure, and not a blown transformer. Someone had cut the primary line and disabled the backup system at the same time.

Someone who understood my house.

“Prescott,” I said.

“I know.”

His voice came from the darkness to my left. Then his radio clicked twice, the silent signal we used when open channels could not be trusted.

A guard appeared with a battery lantern. Dim white light spread across the medical suite. Jonah and Blythe were awake now. Blythe’s lower lip trembled.

“Daddy?”

“I’m right here.”

I crouched between the beds. The greatest lie a father can tell is sometimes the one his children need most.

“Everything’s fine.”

Jonah looked past me toward the hallway. “That noise wasn’t fine.”

Six years old, sick enough to die, and still too smart for comfort.

Elena crossed to the children without waiting for permission. She did not touch them. She simply lowered herself until she was at eye level.

“You’re right,” she told Jonah. “It was a scary noise. But there are a lot of people here whose job is to keep you safe.”

Blythe stared at the necklace around her throat.

“My mommy had one like that.”

Elena’s face broke for half a second.

“Yes,” she said softly. “She did.”

Another shot sounded, farther away.

Prescott spoke into his radio. “North service corridor. Lock internal doors. Nobody enters this wing without visual confirmation.”

Dr. Yates moved toward the door.

I caught his arm.

“Where are you going?”

“To see if anyone is hurt.”

“You’re staying.”

He looked at my hand on his sleeve. “You think I did this?”

“I think I don’t know you as well as I thought.”

A guard rushed in. “Mr. Mercer, we have one intruder down in the generator room. Alive. Two more may have exited through the laundry tunnel.”

“Who authorized tunnel access?”

“No one.”

Prescott’s eyes hardened.

That tunnel had not appeared on architectural plans in twenty years. Only senior security and family knew it existed.

Elena looked at me. “This is what Genevieve was afraid of.”

Yates shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She faced him. “You told her the page was a clerical error.”

His skin went gray.

The room became very quiet.

I said, “What page?”

Elena reached for the report still folded inside her coat. “This one.”

Yates did not answer.

Prescott returned with a portable power unit, and the pumps came back to life one at a time. The nurse removed the disputed medication bag and locked it in a hard evidence case.

I ordered a second medical team from Northwestern, people with no connection to Yates, my family, or any Mercer business. Then I ordered every medication in the house sealed until independently verified.

Yates stared at me.

“You could kill them by interrupting treatment.”

“Then explain the report.”

“It’s old screening. It doesn’t override current oncology.”

“Does it matter?”

He hesitated.

That hesitation was enough.

“Get him out of the medical wing,” I told Prescott. “Not off the property. Put him in the library with two men outside the door.”

Yates’s voice rose. “Lawson, this is madness.”

“No. Madness was believing loyalty and expertise were the same thing.”

Prescott escorted him away.

Elena remained near the beds. Jonah was watching her with open curiosity.

“Did you know our mom?”

“Yes.”

“Were you friends?”

Elena glanced at me before answering. “For a while.”

“What was she like when she wasn’t a mom?”

The question hit me with unexpected force.

Children know their parents in pieces. Breakfast. Bedtime. Rules. Hugs. The person before parenthood becomes a myth.

Elena smiled.

“She sang too loudly in the car.”

Blythe’s eyes widened. “Dad says that.”

“She did,” I said.

“She hated raisins,” Elena continued.

Jonah sat up a little. “Me too.”

“And when she got nervous, she organized drawers that were already organized.”

Blythe smiled for the first time in days.

It lasted three seconds.

Three seconds was enough to remind me what I was fighting for.

I led Elena into the adjoining sitting room while two new nurses watched the twins.

“You said Genevieve gave you the necklace three weeks before she died.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Elena touched the blue stone.

“She said if she gave me something you would recognize, maybe you’d listen.”

“Why didn’t she come to me herself?”

“She tried.”

I hated those words.

Elena sat carefully on the edge of a chair. “She told me you were under pressure then. Federal investigation. A war with the Kessler organization. Your cousin Adrian was handling most of the legitimate businesses. Prescott was rebuilding security after an attack.”

All true.

“And Genevieve believed someone around you was intercepting information,” she continued. “She did not know who.”

I thought of the three denied entry logs.

“What exactly did she discover?”

Elena took a breath.

“The report in my pocket is a copy of a preimplantation genetic review. The date is from when the embryos were created. The boys’ names were written into the clinic file after Genevieve chose them, before transfer.”

That explained the impossible date.

“She had their names picked before she was pregnant?”

“She had everything picked.”

That sounded like her.

Elena unfolded the report and pointed to a handwritten reference number along the bottom.

“Genevieve believed this number was more important than the gene warning.”

“What is it?”

“A research archive accession.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me over the phone. She said it was the one thing Franklin Yates wanted erased.”

A guard appeared at the door. “Mr. Mercer, Prescott needs you downstairs.”

I looked at Elena.

“Stay here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Down in the generator room, the intruder lay on the concrete with his hands bound. Blood darkened his shoulder, but he was conscious. Prescott stood over him holding a wallet.

“No identification,” he said. “But he had this.”

He handed me a laminated access card.

LATHAM REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE.

Elena’s former clinic.

On the back, written in black marker, was the same accession number from Genevieve’s report.

I turned the card over twice.

“Coincidence?”

Prescott gave me a look that answered the question.

The intruder laughed weakly.

I crouched in front of him.

“Who sent you?”

He spat blood onto the floor.