Chapter 6 - the wife who already knew his name
Franklin stared at the restored photograph until his eyes hurt.
Arthur enlarged the background.
Evelyn stood near a laboratory door holding several folders.
She looked no older than twenty-three.
Franklin had met her, or thought he had met her, at a hardware store six years later.
She had asked him for help choosing a drill.
They had married thirteen months afterward.
Nathan sat across from his father.
“Did Mom ever mention working for Northstar?”
“Never.”
Arthur studied the image.
“She may not have worked for us directly.”
He enlarged the badge clipped to her jacket.
MERCER FOUNDATION — RESEARCH AUDIT.
Arthur looked sick.
“That was my father’s foundation.”
Nathan turned.
“Your father funded Northstar?”
Arthur nodded slowly.
“Some of it.”
Franklin looked at him.
“You told me Northstar was privately funded through Keene.”
“That’s what I believed.”
“What else didn’t you know?”
Arthur had no answer.
Detective Cole returned later that afternoon with preliminary archival findings.
Evelyn Hale had existed on paper before marrying Franklin.
But only barely.
Her Social Security record began at age twenty-two.
No reliable school records.
No verifiable childhood medical history.
No birth certificate available in the state database.
Nathan felt physically cold.
“You’re saying Evelyn Hale wasn’t her real name.”
Cole replied, “I’m saying the identity appears to have been constructed.”
Franklin stood abruptly.
“My wife was real.”
“Nobody said she wasn’t.”
“You’re reducing thirty years of my life to paperwork.”
Cole remained calm.
“I’m trying to find out who created that paperwork.”
Arthur looked toward Franklin.
“If Evelyn was assigned to audit Northstar…”
Franklin understood.
“She may have approached me intentionally.”
Nathan shook his head.
“No.”
Franklin’s expression collapsed for the first time.
Everything Evelyn had been to him—wife, mother, companion, the person who had convinced him survival could still contain something good—was being dissected by strangers.
Then Detective Cole’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her face changed.
“The exhumation order was approved unusually fast.”
Franklin frowned.
“Why?”
“Because the cemetery contacted us first.”
Nathan stood.
“What happened?”
Cole hesitated.
“Your wife’s grave was opened three nights ago.”
Franklin stared.
“By whom?”
“We don’t know.”
The coffin was still there.
But when police opened it, the remains inside were gone.
Only Evelyn’s wedding ring remained.
Franklin recognized it immediately.
Inside the coffin, detectives also found a small cassette recorder wrapped in plastic.
The tape inside had not yet been played.
Cole placed a digital copy on the table.
Franklin pressed play.
Static filled the room.
Then Evelyn’s voice.
Older.
Tired.
But unmistakable.
“Franklin, if you are hearing this, Northstar has reached Nathan.”
Nathan stopped breathing.
The recording continued.
“I’m sorry for how much I kept from you. I was sent to watch you after the 1994 incident. I was supposed to find the device.”
Franklin closed his eyes.
“But I fell in love with you.”
His eyes opened.
Evelyn’s voice trembled.
“And when I learned what the files contained, I chose you instead of them.”
Nathan covered his mouth.
“There is something Arthur Mercer never knew. His father did not merely finance Northstar.”
Arthur went rigid.
“He created the program that came before it.”
The tape crackled.
“And if Arthur is hearing this too, ask him about Project Franklin.”
Nobody moved.
Arthur’s face turned white.
Franklin looked at him.
“What is Project Franklin?”
Arthur whispered:
“I’ve never heard that name.”
Then his phone buzzed.
A message from his corporate archive system.
Someone had just accessed a sealed folder last opened by Arthur’s father in 1994.
Its title:
PROJECT FRANKLIN — SUBJECT F.H.
Franklin Hale was not merely one of Northstar’s researchers.
May you like
According to the Mercer archive, he had been one of its subjects.
👉 The secret project bore Franklin’s own name, suggesting the attempted murder he remembered might have been only one part of something done to him long before he disappeared.
