Chapter 7 - THE DNA DILEMMA
My phone vibrated violently against my leg. It was a text from Detective Vance:
“Julian’s legal team just served an emergency injunction. He’s filing for full temporary custody of Maisie tomorrow morning. They’re claiming you have post-divorce psychosis and engineered the smart-home glitch to set him up. Courts might grant it temporarily until a hearing.
My blood boiled. I dialed Vance’s direct line instantly.
"Vance," I barked into the receiver before he could even say hello. "Listen to me and do not interrupt me. The man sitting in that mansion isn't Julian Miller. His name is Arthur Pendelton. He murdered the real Julian in 1997 and stole his life."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell across the line.
"Elena..." Vance said slowly, his tone shifting to the careful, measured cadence an officer uses with an unstable witness. "That is an extraordinarily heavy allegation. If you’re throwing wild theories at the court during a custody battle, his lawyers will annihilate you."
"I am not throwing theories!" I snarled, my voice cutting through the speaker like an edge of broken glass. "I am staring at a California coroner’s report from 1997! I have the autopsy file of the real Julian Miller! Arthur dinned his half-brother in a pool and took his name! That’s why he tried to freeze Maisie today! The Miller family trust requires a three-generation DNA match before her third birthday next month! If she takes the test, his fake identity blows up!"
Vance caught his breath sharply. The detective in him was finally waking up. "Jesus... Elena, if what you’re saying is real... we have a massive legal wall."
"What wall?"
"If you took those documents from his house without a search warrant, they are completely inadmissible in a court of law," Vance explained, his voice tight. "Fruit of the poisonous tree. His lawyers will have the evidence suppressed in five minutes, and Arthur will walk away clean. To arrest him for the 1997 murder and the attempt on Maisie, we need a fresh, legally compliant DNA sample directly from his body to match against the California cold case database."
"Then get a warrant!"
"A judge won't sign a DNA warrant based on stolen documents provided by an ex-wife during a custody dispute! We need a corroborating witness who can testify to the safe's contents."
My stomach dropped into a cold, bottomless pit.
"Clara," I whispered.
"What about Clara?" Vance asked.
"She’s the one who opened the safe! She gave me the drive! She told me to meet her at the Central Parking Garage twenty minutes ago!"
I pulled the phone away from my ear, brought up my tracking app, and checked the signal for the micro-tracking tile I had slipped into the lining of Clara’s designer leather bag while we were kneeling by the desk.
The blinking red dot wasn't anywhere near downtown Central Parking.
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It was moving at seventy miles per hour down Highway 9, heading deep into the dense, dark timberlands of the northern ridge—straight toward Arthur’s isolated, off-grid hunting lodge.
"He found her," I said, my voice deadpan. "He’s taking her to the ridge."
