The Other Daughter by Lisa Gardner Page A

Stokes's confession of healthcare fraud that he would casually drop at his daughter's black-tie event, high on vodka tonics and friends. Uh-huh.
    David shifted Melanie more comfortably in his arms and crossed the street. She was smaller than he would've guessed, having watched her dart around the house all evening like a firefly. She never slowed down and hardly even seemed to need a gasp of air. He'd watched her do everything from heft boxes of mangoes to mop up a spill. He'd also noted that she circled back to the living room half a dozen times to discreetly check up on her mother.
    Now she was leaning her head against his shoulder in a way a woman hadn't done in a long, long time.
    He didn't know what to make of that, so he turned his mind sharply to the file he had on the Stokes family and the few things it told him about Melanie Stokes. Daughter, adopted at the age of nine after being abandoned at the hospital where Dr. Stokes worked. A bit of a media buzz portraying her as a modern-day Orphan Annie. She'd graduated with a B.A. from Wellesley in '91 and was active in various charitable organizations. One of those I-want-to-give-something-back-to-the-world kind of people. Nine months earlier she'd become engaged to Dr. William Sheffield, her father's favorite right-hand man, then ended it a mere three months later without ever giving a reason. One of those my-business-is-my-business kind of people. She helped take care of her mother, who, as Larry Digger had pointed out, had never been the same since the murder of her first daughter. One of those you-mess-with-my-family-you-mess-with-me kind of people. Whatever.
    Nothing in the files indicated that Melanie Stokes was the daughter of a serial killer, though David had found the reporter's list of coincidences extremely interesting. Then again, David couldn't decide what he thought of the reporter. For all his bluster, Larry Digger's hands had been shaking toward the end. The man had probably skipped his nightly pint of bourbon to make contact. No doubt he was drowning in it now.
    Melanie moaned as the house lights hit them both.
    “Don't throw up on me again,” David muttered.
    “Wait…”
    “
Are
you going to be sick?”
    “Wait.” She gripped his jacket. “Don't …tell anyone,” she muttered intently. “Not …my family. I'll pay you…”
    Her eyes were clear. Big and earnest and a startling color, somewhere between blue and gray.
    “Yeah, well, sure. Whatever you want.”
    She sank back down into his arms, seemingly satisfied. David pushed into the foyer and everyone spotted them at once.
    “What's going on here?” Harper Stokes immediately strode toward them, William Sheffield in tow. Then Patricia Stokes came flying, sloshing orange juice on her designer dress.
    “Oh, my God, Melanie.”
    “Bedroom?” David asked, and ignoring everyone's gasps and questions, headed up the stairs. “She mentioned having a migraine.”
    Harper swore. “She should have Fiorinal with codeine in the bathroom. Patricia?”
    She darted ahead three flights and burst from her daughter's bathroom, pills and water in hand, just as David laid Melanie down on a rumpled bed. Immediately he was pushed aside by her family, Harper anxiously picking up his daughter's hand and checking her pulse. He took the water and held it to his daughter's pale lips to wash down the pills. Patricia followed with a damp towel, gently bathing Melanie's face. That left William Sheffield, who hovered self-consciously in the doorway. It wasn't clear to David why the former fiancé was even in the room.
    “What happened?” Harper demanded. He checked his daughter's pulse again, then took the towel from his wife and positioned it across Melanie's forehead. “Where was Melanie? How did you end up with her?”
    “I found her in the park,” David said. Apparently the answer sounded as vague to Harper as it did to David, because the surgeon shot him a look. David returned the stare.
    Of all the people in