Chapter 6 - Elias Needed More Than One Fake Rachel
Emily wanted to confront him immediately.
I stopped her.
That felt strange.
For three years, my family had probably imagined me as the reckless one.
Now I was the person saying:
“Not yet.”
Emily glared.
“He lied.”
“Yes.”
“About another impersonator.”
“Yes.”
“So ask him.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he wants us reacting where he can watch.”
She looked toward him.
Elias sat in the lobby with perfect patience.
Emily hated the point.
Good.
We moved to the other side of the café.
He let us.
That worried me.
“What did the sightings look like?” I asked.
“Mine?”
“All.”
Emily opened her phone.
Three images.
Not secret files.
Photographs taken by ordinary people after she deliberately passed through areas where Vanessa might see.
First: service club outside Fort Grant.
Second: hospital lobby used by military families.
Third: canteen six weeks ago.
Cap.
Mask.
Dark clothes.
Enough silhouette to suggest me.
“The fourth?”
“Never saw it.”
I called Vanessa.
She answered immediately.
“Describe the sighting Emily says wasn't hers.”
Vanessa paused.
“September.”
“Where?”
“Memorial event.”
“What happened?”
“A masked woman stood across the street.”
“Did she enter?”
“No.”
“Did you see the ring?”
“No.”
“Height?”
“Close.”
“Did Elias contact you afterward?”
“Yes.”
“What did he ask?”
Vanessa remembered.
“Whether I still believed Rachel was dead.”
“Not whether it was an impersonator.”
“No.”
That distinction mattered.
“Did you answer?”
“I told him to stop contacting me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said uncertainty becomes its own form of misconduct if you maintain it long enough.”
That sounded like Elias.
Useful because it was partly true.
Emily whispered:
“He said that to me too.”
I looked at her.
“When?”
“After I almost quit.”
“Why quit?”
Her face tightened.
The second impersonation had gone badly.
A retired officer saw Emily and followed her into a parking lot calling my name.
Emily panicked.
Took off the mask.
The man recognized she wasn't me.
“He looked devastated.”
Emily's voice dropped.
“That was when I realized I wasn't only testing Vanessa.”
She had been reopening grief in strangers.
“What did Elias say?”
“That the discomfort proved Vanessa's lie had consequences.”
I stared toward him.
“He turned your guilt into a reason to continue.”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“One more time.”
The canteen six weeks ago.
Then she stopped.
“Why today?”
Emily looked down.
“Elias called yesterday.”
“What did he say?”
“That Vanessa had received credible information you were coming back.”
My skin went cold.
“Who gave him that?”
“He didn't say.”
“Did you know I was coming?”
“No.”
“Then your message saying you found out yesterday—”
“Because he showed me a photograph.”
“What photograph?”
Emily hesitated.
“Airport.”
My stomach tightened.
Three days ago.
I had flown into Baltimore under my current legal alias.
Someone had photographed me at baggage claim.
No cap.
No mask.
Clear enough.
“Elias knew before Vanessa.”
“Yes.”
“He told you I was alive.”
“Yes.”
“And brought you dressed like me.”
Emily's face tightened.
“I thought he wanted Vanessa to see us together.”
“Why?”
“To destroy her claim that I was you.”
That made sense.
Too much.
“Or,” I said, “he wanted witnesses to see two similar women at once.”
Emily stopped.
If I later identified myself publicly as Rachel, Elias could point to the canteen scene.
Look how easy confusion was.
Look how many women dressed alike.
Look how emotionally compromised witnesses had become.
“He's building doubt.”
Emily looked sick.
“At who?”
“Everyone.”
She stared toward the lobby.
“Why?”
“Because he doesn't need people to believe I'm dead forever.”
I looked at her.
“He only needs them unsure long enough to control what happens next.”
Emily sat back.
I remembered my old audit.
Elias never denied facts.
He delayed certainty.
Asked for another review.
Another classification.
Another meeting.
Delay until the decision became expensive.
My phone rang.
Vanessa again.
“Rachel.”
“What?”
“I found the date of the fourth sighting.”
“September what?”
“Fourteenth.”
Emily's face drained.
I covered the phone.
“What?”
She whispered:
“I was with Mom.”
“Where?”
“Charleston.”
Five hundred miles away.
Vanessa continued:
“And Rachel…”
“Yes?”
“The woman wasn't only dressed like you.”
I waited.
“She had your wrist scar.”
My skin went cold.
Emily stared.
I looked down at the white line across my wrist.
A scar nobody could copy by choosing the same jacket.
Unless the woman had been prepared more carefully than we thought.
Or unless Vanessa's memory had been shaped by what she expected to see.
Either possibility was dangerous.
I asked:
“How close were you?”
Vanessa went quiet.
“Across the street.”
“Then you didn't see a scar.”
Silence.
She realized it.
“No.”
Her voice changed.
“I thought I did.”
May you like
Someone had not only been manufacturing Rachel sightings.
They had taught Vanessa what details to remember afterward.
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