Chapter 4 - The Man Who Should Have Been DeadI didn't sleep.
Neither did Emily.
We sat on opposite sides of the nursery while our son slept between us.
The photograph remained on the floor.
Neither of us wanted to touch it again.
At 3:17 a.m., my phone buzzed.
A text.
GO TO THE OLD RIVERSIDE TRAIN STATION ALONE. 7:00 A.M.
Below it was a second message.
BRING THE CAMERA.
I showed Emily.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“You know who sent it?”
She shook her head.
“But you know this is a trap.”
“Yes.”
“Then why would I go?”
“Because whoever sent it knows about the camera.”
She looked toward our son.
“And knows more about us than we do.”
At 6:30, I drove to the station.
I told Emily to stay home with the doors locked.
She wanted to come.
I refused.
At 7:02, I stood alone on the abandoned platform.
Fog hung over the tracks.
A train passed in the distance.
Then I heard footsteps.
A man appeared beneath the old station canopy.
He was in his sixties.
Gray hair.
Dark coat.
A scar across his left cheek.
I knew him.
I had seen his face thousands of times.
It was on photographs in Emily's house.
At family funerals.
In old albums.
Standing beside Emily as a little girl.
I couldn't breathe.
“Tom?”
He stopped.
“Daniel.”
I backed away.
“You're dead.”
He smiled sadly.
“That's what they wanted everyone to believe.”
Emily's adoptive father was alive.
The man everyone believed had died of a heart attack six years ago was standing in front of me.
“Why?”
“Because I found out what they were doing.”
“Who?”
He looked at the camera in my hand.
“The people who installed that.”
“What are they doing?”
He glanced toward the tracks.
“Watching families.”
I frowned.
“That makes no sense.”
“It will.”
He stepped closer.
“Your mother was never supposed to hurt Emily.”
“Then why did she?”
“Because she was trying to keep her alive.”
I shook my head.
“She abused her.”
Tom's eyes hardened.
“Your mother crossed lines. But she wasn't the one who ordered the surveillance.”
“Who was?”
He looked directly at me.
Then he said:
“The company you work for.”
I laughed.
I couldn't help it.
I had worked at Lakeshore Financial for seven years.
“You're insane.”
“Am I?”
He reached into his coat.
Pulled out a folder.
Inside were photographs.
My house.
Emily walking to the grocery store.
The hospital.
Our son's crib.
And one image that made my stomach twist.
It was a photograph of me sleeping.
Taken from inside my own bedroom.
“Your company has been watching you for months.”
“Why?”
“Because of your father.”
I froze.
“My father died when I was ten.”
“Yes.”
Tom looked away.
“But before he died, he discovered something buried in your family.”
“What?”
He opened the folder.
The final page contained one sentence.
PROJECT LULLABY.
“What's that?”
Tom whispered:
“The program that decides which newborns are worth saving.”
Before I could respond, a gunshot cracked through the fog.
Tom jerked backward.
Blood spread across his coat.
He fell.
I dropped beside him.
“Tom!”
He gripped my wrist.
With his last breath, he whispered:
“Your son was never supposed to be born.”
May you like
Then another shot rang out.
And the lights on the platform went black.
