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“More births recorded than birth certificates issued,” I said. Katherine smirked.
“Someone has been doing their homework,” she praised, and we all chuckled. “I managed to track down one of the nurses who had been in the delivery room with my mother. The woman told me everything she could. How my grandmother had taken the child from my mother’s arms and handed it off to another woman. One with a cane with a silver cross on it.”
“You’re telling me Leigh knew someone with that cane?” Liam growled.
“Everyone except my father,” Katherine confirmed. “The nurse told me that after everyone left, the woman with the cane returned. The only reason she noticed was because the argument they got into was pretty heated, and the woman was escorted out of the facility.”
“That makes sense,” I told her. “We believe that your mother was a plant inside the McDonough clan. Her job was to seduce your father, marry him, and, at a date of their choosing, assassinate him.”
“But then she got pregnant with you and Marianne,” Vas interjected. “That wasn’t part of the plan. What made it worse was the fact that you weren’t Seamus McDonough’s blood heirs, either.”
“Don’t remind me.” Katherine narrowed her eyes.
“We believe that someone recognized Remus as Seamus’s twin back in Ireland,” I informed her. “There isn’t much of a paper trail, but we believe that at the same time Sheila was trying to infiltrate, so was he.”
“We’re not sure when she found out about it,” Vas explained. “But at some point, they began working together. I don’t even think whoever they were working for knew that Seamus had been switched with Remus. Not until we started digging ourselves.”
“We have one fucked up family.” Ava chuckled darkly.
“Indeed,” Katherine gave a small laugh.
“Tell us what happened the night you were taken.”
“Marianne caught me rifling through everything.” She sniffed, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I confronted her about it. I still didn’t know she was my sister. Not until she came to Portland. She spewed some lie about finding it in her parents’ attic before we left for college. That she hadn’t confronted them about it. I believed her lies. Casting aside any doubts I had and the fact that she had looked exactly like my mother melted away as she cried in my arms about how they had hidden her entire childhood from her.
“That night, they came for me. I was getting ready for bed, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in one of Elias’s bedrooms.” She paused to take a calming breath. There was a slight sheen of sweat collecting along her brow, and her eyes were constricted. She was getting ready to run.
“I think that is good for now,” I told her gently. Relief washed over her face, and Ava smiled at me gratefully. “What we need to figure out is where the McDonoughs disappeared to and who the hell sent those men to my club.”
“Timbres are known for guarding the Dollhouse.” Kenzi spoke up from the corner. “So we know that those impetus fucks must have sent them.”
“That can’t be their actual name.” Vas shook his head. “That’s more like a subtitle and not a moniker for a secret society.”
“If that’s the case, then we’re fucked,” Seamus grunted. “Do you know how many secret societies there are?” Kiernan shot him a look.
“They aren’t so secret if you know about them, are they?”
“Fuck you, Kiernan,” Seamus sneered at his brother. “I’m just saying that if all we have is their tag line, it’s going to make it a lot harder.”
“Not necessarily,” Bridget cut in. “We know that most upper echelon members of the society carry a cane with a silver cross, which means all we have to do is create a program that monitors CCTV footage to look for that specific variable.”
“That could take forever,” Mark complained. “Not to mention that they picked a cane that is highly popular. There could be hundreds, if not thousands, of people walking around the world with that same exact cane.”
The kid had a point.
“Except,” Bridget narrowed her eyes at him, “if we have the program dig into each individual’s background looking for more specific variables, we can weed out anyone who doesn’t fit a specific criterion.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Andrei asked. “How would you know what variables to look for in their background?”
“Because everyone with a society cane is a fake,” Ava murmured. We all turned to look at her. “Matthias told me what he and Bridget discovered. The society is made up of men and women with fabricated backgrounds. Missing children of high society members. Women abducted for sex auction. Babies born the wrong gender or in the wrong order. These are all known variables that would make it easier to find them. Sheila had a squeaky-clean background tailored to fit exactly what my great-grandparents were looking for when it came to a bride for their son.”
“The Dollhouse trains women and men to blend in.” Kenzi spoke up. “You’re trained to seduce by being the exact fantasy of the target. A chameleon. Once an operation is complete, that identity disappears.”
“Except,” Mark snapped his fingers, “you can’t make an identity disappear. Not like how you make one appear. Once a social security number hits the system, it can’t be removed. Some of the best hackers have tried.”
“But it can be reassigned.” Bridget let out a breathy laugh. “They would be able to reuse a social security number multiple times by reframing everything attached to it.”
“It’s genius and nearly foolproof.”
