Chapter 2 - The Phantom Fingerprints
My heart pounded furiously against my ribs as I stared at the photograph of a dead man.
Gabriel looked older, his face hardened by time, but there was no mistaking those piercing blue eyes.
My horrific car accident was not a tragedy of bad luck or poor weather.
It was an attempted murder, orchestrated from inside my own home.
I immediately grabbed my cell phone and dialed the only man I could still trust.
Vance was my head of corporate security, a former military operative who had saved my life more times than I could count.
He arrived at my mansion less than twenty minutes later, his expression grim as he surveyed the empty room.
I handed him the rusted brake line and the photograph of my brother.
"Run Rebecca's background again," I ordered, my voice trembling with suppressed rage.
"I personally vetted her when she was hired last year," Vance argued, pulling out his encrypted tablet.
"Do it anyway, Vance, and pull her fingerprints from the water glass she left on the kitchen counter."
Vance carefully dusted the glass, scanned the prints, and uploaded them to the federal database.
We sat in the suffocating silence of my massive living room, waiting for the results.
The tablet finally beeped with a loud, piercing chime.
Vance stared at the glowing screen, his eyes widening in absolute disbelief.
"This is completely impossible, Ethan," Vance whispered, slowly turning the screen toward me.
The database did not return the name Rebecca.
The fingerprints belonged to a woman named Sarah Jenkins.
Sarah Jenkins was Gabriel's high school girlfriend who had supposedly died in the exact same fire twenty years ago.
Before I could even process this earth-shattering revelation, the entire mansion was plunged into complete darkness.
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The main power grid had been intentionally cut from the outside.
The heavy oak front door slowly creaked open, and the faint red laser sight of a sniper rifle danced across my chest.
