Chapter 6 - the crossing to Point Delmar
Ethan started the motorboat while bullets struck the boathouse walls.
Rebecca released the rusted sea doors.
A wave lifted the boat and threw it into the storm.
Nora held Sophie beneath the protective canopy. Laura crouched beside them, one arm around her daughter and the other gripping the railing.
Ethan steered through violent water toward the distant beam of Point Delmar Lighthouse.
The marine station had been abandoned after a laboratory fire killed six researchers twenty-two years earlier. Ethan’s father blamed electrical failure, closed the property, and forbade anyone from returning.
Laura leaned toward Ethan.
“The fire was deliberate.”
“You found evidence?”
“I found payment records. Your father purchased new identities for three researchers who supposedly died.”
“So they survived.”
“Some did.”
The boat crashed over another wave.
“What does Locker Seventeen contain?”
“Your original birth records.”
Ethan looked at her.
“My birth certificate is public.”
“It is false.”
Lightning illuminated the coast.
Laura continued.
“Cole Maritime’s criminal network does not only create identities for missing children. It began by replacing one child twenty-two years ago.”
Ethan’s hands tightened around the wheel.
“You’re saying I’m not Ethan Cole.”
“I’m saying someone altered the medical records after the real Ethan Cole died.”
Nora stared at him from beneath the canopy.
Ethan felt the boat tilt, though the sea had not changed.
“My parents raised me.”
“Your mother did,” Laura said. “Your father may have known you were not biologically his.”
Ethan remembered his father’s emotional distance, the endless tests, the private doctors, the insistence that Ethan never submit DNA to public ancestry databases.
“Who am I?”
“That is why we need the archive.”
A second engine roared behind them.
A black pursuit boat emerged from the rain.
Miles stood at the bow.
Even at a distance, Ethan recognized the broad shoulders and controlled posture of his former security chief. Wade steered beside him.
“Get down!” Ethan shouted.
Gunfire crossed the water.
The windshield shattered.
Laura covered Sophie.
Rebecca returned fire through the rear opening, forcing Miles to lower his head.
Point Delmar grew closer.
The lighthouse stood on a narrow island connected to the mainland by a submerged service tunnel. Waves broke against the concrete dock.
Ethan aimed the boat toward it.
A bullet struck the engine.
The motor screamed.
Smoke poured from the rear compartment.
“We’re losing power,” Nora said.
“Jump when we reach the ladder.”
The boat collided with the dock.
Ethan lifted Sophie first. Laura climbed after her, followed by Nora and Rebecca. Ethan leaped onto the ladder as the damaged boat spun away.
Miles’s vessel was less than one hundred yards behind.
They ran toward the lighthouse.
Laura used the brass key to unlock a steel service door beneath the tower. Everyone entered, and Ethan sealed it.
Inside, an emergency stairwell descended underground.
The air smelled of mildew and burned metal.
Sophie looked at the darkness.
“This is where they brought the boxes.”
Laura held her hand.
“I know.”
“You came back?”
“I never stopped looking.”
They descended three levels and entered the abandoned marine laboratory.
Broken tanks lined the walls. Old computers sat beneath plastic covers. On the far side of the room stood a row of numbered storage lockers.
Seventeen was already open.
Ethan looked at Laura.
“You said the key opened it.”
“It should have.”
Someone had arrived before them.
The locker contained a portable projector and a single envelope.
Ethan opened it.
Inside was a photograph of two boys, both approximately seven years old, standing beside his father.
One was Ethan.
The other looked exactly like him.
On the back, someone had written:
ELIAS AND ETHAN — FINAL EVALUATION.
Nora whispered, “Twins?”
Ethan shook his head.
“My mother never mentioned a brother.”
Laura activated the projector.
A video appeared on the stained laboratory wall.
Ethan’s father, Charles Cole, sat at a desk. He looked younger than Ethan remembered but just as severe.
“If you are watching this,” Charles said, “then the substitution program has failed.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“The boy raised as Ethan Cole is not my biological son.”
Nora touched Ethan’s arm.
Charles continued.
“He was selected because he displayed the traits required to inherit the company: intelligence, emotional control, and obedience.”
Ethan felt sick.
The screen showed footage of children undergoing medical tests inside the laboratory.
Among them were the two identical boys.
“The original Ethan died during the evaluation,” Charles said. “The surviving boy was assigned his identity.”
Sophie gripped Laura’s coat.
Ethan stared at his own childhood face.
“His birth name was Elias Reed.”
Everyone turned toward Laura.
She looked equally shocked.
“Reed?” Ethan asked.
Laura’s lips parted.
Before she could answer, the laboratory lights came on.
Miles stood in the doorway with Wade and four armed men.
He smiled at Ethan.
May you like
“Welcome home, brother.”
👉 The Point Delmar archive revealed Ethan had been a replacement child named Elias Reed, while Miles’s final word suggested the two men shared far more than a criminal history.
