Epilogue
The knock on Garrison’s door came in three sharp raps. A pause, then the handle turned.
Tori sat up straighter in her chair. Beside her, Anton did the same. That unconscious mirroring thing twins apparently did, which still caught her off guard every time. Blade’s hand slipped from hers as he leaned back in the chair on her left.
The man who entered wore a charcoal suit that screamed federal authority and a face that belonged on currency—all angles and no warmth. His hair was silver-gray, cropped military short, and his eyes swept the room like he was cataloguing threats.
“Deputy Director Mario Platt, Department of Justice.” He didn’t offer his hand. “Ms. Garrison, thank you for arranging this.”
Garrison nodded. “Of course.”
Platt remained standing, hands clasped behind his back. “I’m sure Ms. Garrison has informed you that Barclay is cooperating fully. He confirms he murdered the Crews on direct orders from a ranking member of the Nexus Initiative.”
No preamble. No small talk. Platt cut straight to it.
“We’ve been going through Wells’s recovered files, and this runs deep. It’s going to take us a while to unravel it all. Especially how you, Dr. Stone, played a role in this.” Platt looked at Anton, whose eyes went wide.
He put his hand to his sternum. “Me? I wasn’t involved. I—”
“Not directly.” Platt cut him off with a wave. “After Barclay framed you for your parents’ murder, he had you transferred to a research facility in Seattle. The intake notes labeled you a juvenile psychopath. Obviously we know this was all fabricated. You were four years old.”
“I remember the building,” Anton said. “Not the rooms. Just the building.”
“The doctor who eventually pulled you out wasn’t supposed to. He saw what the charts said and what you actually were and didn’t see a match. He took you home. He probably saved your life.”
“My adoptive father.” Anton’s voice was barely there.
“Yes. He never knew the Aletheia facility was part of a larger network that kept tabs on you the entire time. Let me ask you, why did you open your practice in Florida?”
Anton glanced at Tori like she might have the answer, but she’d been wondering the same thing. And after everything that had happened, she had a feeling it wasn’t pure coincidence.
“Well, my father suggested I go to his alma mater for my education. When we toured the campus, I thought it was beautiful. Especially the water. The alumni status helped financially, of course. After I graduated, I just stayed.”
Platt nodded. “That’s what I suspected. What about your retainer with McCrary’s firm?”
Anton shifted. “Well, I guess the surveillance will tell you that Rich was a patient. It came up that he’d known my father, and he liked me so much he wanted all his staff to see me exclusively.”
Anton’s head dropped into his hands. “They knew who I was the whole time.”
“From the day you set up the retainer,” Platt said. “They picked you because they could control you. McCrary sent his employees from the firm to give Wells access. We’ve swept your office, and it appears you were under surveillance for quite some time.”
Anton went very still. “Someone was listening . . . All my sessions?”
“Every one. The recordings were in Wells’s files. They’re sealed now under federal privilege protocol, but they exist.”
“That’s just . . .” Anton’s hands flexed in his lap. “It’s not just an invasion of my privacy. It violates patient privilege in the most egregious way.”
Tori watched him. She couldn’t say anything without making it about her, so she waited.
Anton looked at her. “They knew who I was.”
“They brought you in,” Tori said. “They wanted you specifically. A psychiatrist they could use to keep tabs on their people.”
“Florek.” Anton’s voice was flat now. “He was going to expose the shell accounts. They were listening to him talk to me about it. They killed him because of what he knew.”
“All part of the Nexus Initiative,” Platt said. “It’s a cabal we’ve been tracking for years. Barclay and Wells are just the tip of the iceberg.”
Tori’s chest tightened. They were right. All of it. Every instinct, every connection, every sleepless night chasing shadows that turned out to be monsters.
Garrison leaned forward. “Dr. Crew, Detective St. James, you did it. You brought them to justice. We can’t thank you enough.”
The words should have felt like victory. Instead, they settled over Tori like a blanket she couldn’t quite pull tight enough.
“That’s not the real reason we called you here,” Garrison said.
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Garrison’s pen stopped clicking. Blade’s hand went still on his knee. Even the air conditioning seemed to quiet.
Platt’s professional mask didn’t slip, but his focus narrowed, laser-sharp, onto Tori and Anton.
He pulled out a chair and sat, folding his hands on the polished table.
“In Barclay’s confession, and in the files we recovered, we found a discrepancy in the original Crew murder file. Another lie. They were all lies.”
Tori’s pulse spiked. She’d lived with the weight of her parents’ deaths for twenty-eight years. She’d accepted the brutality, the randomness, the way evil could slice through a family and leave only fragments. What more could they possibly—
Platt slid a document across the desk.
A birth certificate. Official seal, crisp edges.
Tori’s fingers trembled as she picked it up. The names jumped out at her immediately:
Nikos Stavros Crew and Ji-Yeon Park Crew. Her parents. The date of birth made her stomach lurch.
October 12, 1998.
Two days before the murders.
Her mind flashed to the autopsy report she’d read weeks ago.
Victim three, unborn female child.
The line had haunted her, the idea that she’d lost not just her parents but a sibling who never got the chance to breathe.
“The report was a lie, Dr. Crew.” Platt’s voice cut through her thoughts like glass. “Your mother wasn’t pregnant when she died. She had just given birth. Barclay’s first official act for the Initiative wasn’t just murder. It was kidnapping.”
The oxygen seemed to vanish from the room. Tori’s lungs locked, as if her diaphragm had forgotten its most basic function. Her eyes dropped back to the birth certificate, scanning for details she’d missed.
The time: 3:47 a.m.
Weight: 6 pounds, 2 ounces.
Length: 18 inches.
And then the name.
Isadora Jinri Crew.
The paper slipped from her fingers and fluttered to the floor.
Isadora.
Not a possibility. Not a maybe. Not a victim who died with her parents.
A sister. Stolen. Alive.
The room spun around her. Blade’s hand found her shoulder, steady and warm, but she couldn’t feel it. Anton leaned forward, his face pale as he processed the same impossible truth.
“They took her.” Her voice came out as a whisper. “They murdered our parents, and they took our sister.”
Platt frowned. “We believe so, yes.”
“Why? Why would they steal a baby?” Anton asked.
Anton’s eyes fixed on her, searching for something she didn’t have to give. Her gaze shifted to Platt instead, the only place left to look.
Platt’s expression darkened. “We don’t know for sure. But the children of Nexus members are considered assets. Their ‘research,’ as your mother called it, was about more than regenerative tissue. It was about potential. And they believed Isadora had the highest potential of all.”
The silence stretched like a wire about to snap.
Tori reached down for and retrieved the birth certificate, her hands steadier now. The shock was crystallizing into something harder, more focused. She looked from the paper in her hands to Anton, whose dark eyes reflected her own.
Finally, she turned to Blade. His eyes carried it all. Grief for what she’d lost, fury at what had been taken, and an unspoken promise that whatever came next, she wouldn’t face it alone.
The wound was immense, ripped open just as another was beginning to heal. But the pain wasn’t defeat.
It was fuel.
“She’s out there,” Tori said. “Isadora is out there, and I’m going to find her.”
Not a hope. Not a wish.
A promise.