Chapter 2 - The Ghost's Ledger
I stared at the glowing screen of my phone in absolute horror.
The woods around me were pitch black, silent except for the distant sirens.
I had to find Noah and Lily before those armed men did.
We had an emergency meeting spot at an old abandoned diner off Route 9.
I ran for three miles through thick brush and biting cold wind.
When I finally broke through the tree line, I saw the rusted neon sign of the diner.
Noah's beaten-up sedan was parked behind the dumpsters, hidden from the main road.
I knocked twice on the trunk, the secret signal we had established years ago.
Noah popped the trunk open and emerged with a sleeping Lily safely wrapped in a blanket.
"Thank God you are alive, Mr. Carter," Noah whispered with tears in his eyes.
I hugged them both tightly, feeling a brief moment of relief.
"We cannot stay here long," I told him while scanning the empty highway.
I pulled out my laptop from the backseat of his car and connected it to my cellular hotspot.
I needed to trace those suspicious money transfers from Claire's accounts.
My fingers flew across the keyboard as I hacked into my own family company's financial records.
The transfers were not going to offshore accounts like I originally thought.
They were being funneled directly into a local biomedical research facility owned by Marcus Hale.
"What is at that facility?" Noah asked, looking over my shoulder.
"I do not know, but it is worth millions of dollars," I replied.
I clicked on a hidden folder attached to the latest transaction.
It contained a high-resolution surveillance video timestamped from yesterday afternoon.
I hit play, and my blood ran ice cold.
The video showed a woman walking through a white laboratory hallway.
She had Claire's face, Claire's hair, and Claire's exact walking posture.
But as the woman turned toward the camera, she reached up and peeled off a silicone mask.
Beneath the mask was a face covered in surgical scars and heavy bandages.
The imposter was not just pretending to be my sister.
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She was being surgically reconstructed to permanently replace her.
Suddenly, a heavy spotlight hit the windshield of our car, blinding us completely.
