Chapter 6 - My Brother's SecretWe spent the next two days searching for Martin.
There was no official record of him after 2004.
No bank accounts.
No driver's license.
No property.
Nothing.
It was as if he had evaporated.
But someone had kept paying one bill.
A storage unit in another town.
The payments had been made every month for twenty-two years.
The name on the account was not Martin.
It was Noah Bennett.
Mine.
I stared at the receipt.
"I never opened this."
June frowned.
"Someone used your identity."
"Twenty-two years ago?"
She nodded.
"Apparently."
The storage unit was smaller than 217.
Inside was a single metal chair.
A desk.
A cassette recorder.
And a box of tapes.
The first tape was labeled:
FOR NOAH.
I put it into the recorder.
Static filled the room.
Then my brother's voice.
My hands went numb.
"Noah, if you're hearing this, I failed."
I stared at the machine.
Martin continued.
"I didn't leave the girls because I didn't love them."
His voice cracked.
"I left because someone told me they would kill them if I stayed."
Claire started crying.
Ava sat beside her.
Martin continued.
"The hospital wasn't safe."
"Mercer wasn't safe."
"And neither was our family."
I froze.
"Our mother didn't die naturally."
I looked at the girls.
Martin's voice continued.
"She was investigating something. She found records she wasn't supposed to see."
Then the tape clicked.
A different voice spoke.
Male.
Calm.
"Martin, you've run out of time."
The recording ended.
Nobody spoke.
Then we found another tape.
This one had a date.
Three days before the girls were born.
Martin's voice returned.
"I'm going to do something terrible."
A long pause.
"I'm going to disappear."
He explained that someone inside the hospital had been switching medical records.
Babies.
Names.
Blood types.
Birth certificates.
He believed newborns were being used in an illegal adoption network.
But the girls had discovered it.
Their mother had found evidence.
And someone wanted them dead.
I stopped the tape.
"Why didn't Martin come back?"
June answered quietly.
"Maybe he did."
I looked at her.
"What?"
She pointed to the next tape.
A label.
2007.
Martin's voice was older.
More tired.
"I tried to contact Noah."
Static.
"I watched him from across the street."
My heart stopped.
"He was raising them."
A pause.
"He looks exhausted."
Another pause.
"But they're alive."
His voice broke.
"I can't go home."
Then:
"If I go back, they'll follow me."
The tape clicked off.
I felt sick.
For twenty-two years, I'd thought my brother had forgotten us.
He hadn't.
He had been watching.
Then June found something inside the recorder.
A folded photograph.
Martin standing beside a man.
The man was younger.
But unmistakable.
Dr. Elias Mercer.
And beneath the photograph was a handwritten note.
Martin owes us one child.
I stared at the words.
"What does that mean?"
Ava picked up the photograph.
Then her eyes widened.
"Dad..."
"What?"
She turned it over.
There was another photograph hidden behind it.
A baby.
A newborn boy.
May you like
And on the back:
HE WAS NEVER LOST.
