Chapter 293 Partial Print
ADRIANA
Hazel arrived with a bag over one shoulder. She set the bag on the small table in the corner of the room and opened it and the smell reached me across the space.
She had brought my actual favorite, which meant she had gone out of her way to find it rather than just grabbing whatever was available from the hospital cafeteria.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“I didn’t ask if you were hungry.” She pulled the container out and set it in front of the empty chair. “Sit down.”
“Hazel—”
“Lana needs you functional. That requires food. Sit down and eat something.”
I sat down and looked at the food and thought about the fact that Lana hadn’t eaten since wherever they’d had her and whatever they’d given her, which was probably not this, which was probably not anything close to adequate for an infant her age, and the thought made me so furious and so heartbroken simultaneously that I picked up the fork and took a bite just to have something to do with my hands.
“The twins called,” Hazel said, sitting across from me. “Leo told them Lana was found. They want to come to the hospital.”
“Not yet. Not until she’s awake. I don’t want them seeing her with the tubes and the machines.” I took another bite without tasting it. “Tell them soon. Tell them she needs quiet right now but soon.”
“Lorain asked if she could make her something.”
I stopped with the fork halfway to my mouth. My heart squeezed, seeing how all my children loved each other.
Hazel was quiet for a moment. “Adrian’s blood was drawn this morning for the DNA test.”
“I know.”
“Simone and her son weren’t brought here, as you requested.”
“Good.” I set the fork down. “I don’t want them within a kilometer of this hospital. Whatever needs to happen with that test, it happens away from here and away from Lana.”
“The results should be ready tomorrow morning.”
“Fine.” I looked at Lana in the crib.
Her color was better now, her breathing the slow even rhythm of something that had found its way back to a sustainable pace. The breathing monitor was still on but the oxygen mask was gone, which the nurse had told me earlier was a positive sign, that she was managing her own respiration without assistance now.
“What about Roy?”
“He texted twenty minutes ago. He’s in the building.”
I pushed the food aside and stood up.
Elijah was in the doorway. I looked at him. “Give me ten minutes with Roy alone,” I said.
“Adriana—”
“Ten minutes. Then I’ll tell you everything he tells me. I promise.” I held his gaze. “Ten minutes.”
He stepped aside.
I found Roy coming off the elevator at the end of the corridor, and the first thing I noticed was that he was holding a brown envelope and the second was the expression on his face. I couldn’t place my finger on it but it didn’t look like good news.
“She’s back,” he said, looking at me. “I heard when I arrived. How is she?”
“Coma. They think she’s going to be okay.” I kept my voice level. “What do you have?”
He held up the envelope. I took it from him and opened it and pulled out the report and read it.
Then I read it again.
“Inconclusive,” I said.
“Yes.” He ran his hand through his hair. “He ran the tests multiple times. After he excluded your DNA, Elijah’s, mine, and Hazel’s — which he could do because he had reference samples for all of us — there was nothing identifiable remaining. Just a partial print.” He paused. “Whoever handled that letter wore latex gloves throughout. The partial came from one area where the glove apparently shifted slightly — maybe putting it on or taking it off. It wasn’t enough for a full identification.”
That was the one piece of physical evidence I had, and it had led to nothing.
“The paper itself?” I said. “The envelope it came in?”
Roy looked at me. “Where is the envelope?”
I thought back. I had handed him the letter. Just the letter. The envelope had still been in my room.
“I forgot,” I said. “I’ll get it to you tonight.” I folded the report back into the envelope. “Is there anything in the partial that tells you anything at all? Size, shape, anything?”
“He said it’s consistent with a smaller hand. Signifyiibg it might have been a woman or a slight-framed man. That’s as far as he was willing to go without more.” He looked at me carefully. “A woman, Adriana.”
“I know.” I had suspected that since the letter arrived. The demand to divorce Elijah hinted at that.
“What do you want to do with this?”
“I want you to keep working on it. Get the envelope to him as soon as I can get it out of my room — Hazel can bring it to you tonight.” I looked at the door at the far end of the corridor where Elijah was. “I’m also starting to think the fingerprint is secondary. The important question is how Simone knew to come here exactly when she did. Who told her. Who briefed her on the succession process. Because she didn’t arrive alone and she didn’t arrive on instinct, someone engineered that.”
“You want me to look into her background.”
“Everything. Where she’s been for the last fifteen years, who she’s been in contact with, who paid for her to come here.” I looked at him. “And Roy — I need you to do this without Elijah knowing. Not yet. He’s dealing with enough and I want something concrete before I bring him into this part of it.”
Roy was quiet for a moment. “He’s going to want to know.”
“He will know. When I have something worth telling him.” I turned toward the door. “Thank you. For the fingerprint, for coming tonight. How is your wife?”
Something shifted in his face. “She’s comfortable,” he said. “That’s the best I can say.”
I put my hand on his arm briefly. “Go home after this. Be with her.”
“I’ll go when I know you have what you need.”
I went back to Lana’s room and Elijah was there, sitting in the chair by the crib, watching her the way he had been watching her since we arrived — with an expression that was stripped of all its usual management, just a father looking at his daughter and being afraid in the specific way that fear arrived when it was about someone you would do anything for.
“Well?” he said.
“Inconclusive,” I said. “Only a partial print. Whoever it was wore gloves.”
He pressed his lips together. “So nothing.”
“Not nothing. A partial. And a direction.” I sat down beside him. “Roy’s going to keep working on it. I think we’re looking for a woman, Elijah. Someone who knows you personally, not just your title. Someone who has a reason to want me specifically out of your life.” I held his gaze. “Someone who knows about Simone and used her arrival as another pressure point.”
He was quiet.
“The envelope is still in my room,” I said. “I’m sending it to Roy tonight. It might give us something the letter didn’t.”
“And in the morning?”
“After we get the DNA results and we deal with whatever they say.” I looked at Lana. “And then we find whoever did this to her and we make sure they understand exactly what it costs to go after my family.”
Elijah reached across and took my hand and I let him hold it and we sat together in the small hospital room with the machines keeping their quiet vigil over our daughter.
I turned the things I knew over in my mind, the partial print, the envelope, Simone and whoever had sent her, the name that was somewhere in the evidence and hadn’t surfaced yet. I’ll find it and I’ll use it.