Chapter 12 - The Woman Wearing Evelyn’s Face
Naomi raised her weapon.
The woman beside my bed did not move.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Her eyes stayed on the video.
“That isn’t possible.”
“Step away from Clara.”
“I am Evelyn.”
Onscreen, the other Evelyn leaned toward the camera. Her face was partially shadowed, but the resemblance was exact.
Same dark eyes.
Same narrow chin.
Same small scar near the left eyebrow.
My Evelyn had received that scar falling from a horse at sixteen.
The woman in my room had it too.
Naomi ordered the officer to restrain her.
She resisted only when he reached for the second phone.
“That belongs to my mother.”
The officer secured her wrists.
I searched my memory for a detail an impersonator might not know.
“At my wedding, what did you put in my bouquet?”
She answered immediately.
“A sewing needle wrapped in blue thread. You tore your hem before walking down the aisle.”
Only Evelyn and I had known.
Then the video froze.
The Evelyn beside my mother turned toward the lens, revealing something behind her ear.
A strip of translucent medical adhesive.
Prosthetic material.
The woman in my room saw it too.
“That’s not me.”
Naomi enlarged the image.
A fine seam ran from the ear toward the hairline.
The face had been constructed.
But the voice remained convincing.
“Deepfake overlay on a live actor,” Naomi said. “High-level equipment.”
Whitmore Medical Systems produced neural mapping tools used in reconstructive surgery and biometric modeling.
Someone had weaponized my company’s technology to imitate Evelyn.
The realization made my stomach turn.
The false Evelyn in the video picked up the music box.
“Midnight,” she said in Evelyn’s copied voice. “Bring the drive, Clara.”
Then she smashed the box against the concrete floor.
The wooden roof cracked open.
Documents spilled out.
Before the feed ended, I saw my father’s handwriting across a yellow envelope.
Naomi lowered her weapon but did not release Evelyn.
“We still verify everyone.”
Evelyn nodded, shaken.
A fingerprint scan confirmed her identity.
So did an old surgical record of the scar.
The impersonator remained unknown.
At 11:27, the digital lab reported that the video’s background contained a distinctive ventilation hum used in abandoned botanical structures.
The old conservatory named in my mother’s message belonged to the Whitmore estate before my father donated the surrounding land to the city.
It sat twelve minutes from the hospital.
Naomi wanted tactical officers to secure it.
I wanted to go.
“You’re thirty-four weeks pregnant and recently assaulted.”
“My mother is there.”
“It may be a trap.”
“It is a trap. That does not mean we ignore what is inside it.”
The doctors refused to discharge me.
So Naomi arranged a controlled transfer to another hospital as cover while tactical officers moved toward the conservatory.
I remained in an armored ambulance two blocks away with a medical team.
Through Naomi’s body camera feed, I watched officers enter the glass structure.
Dead vines hung from rusted beams.
Rain tapped against broken panes.
At the center stood Dr. Reed’s empty chair.
Blood marked one armrest.
My mother was gone.
The destroyed music box lay on the floor.
Most documents had been burned.
One envelope remained intact beneath a metal grate.
Naomi opened it with gloved hands.
Inside was a laboratory report from the year my father died.
It documented traces of a cardiac drug in his blood.
A handwritten note beneath it read:
ELAINE—IF I DIE, THE PERSON WHO SIGNED THIS REPORT IS PART OF IT.
The pathologist’s signature was visible.
Dr. Samuel Reed.
I stared at the screen.
The man who claimed to protect my mother had certified the evidence of my father’s murder.
Then Naomi’s camera turned toward a sound behind her.
May you like
Dr. Reed stepped from the darkness holding a gun.
📖 Find out why Dr. Reed aimed the gun at Naomi—and what he confessed about Clara’s father in CHAPTER 13. 👇
