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SEVENTY-EIGHT

Derrick sipped his tea to wash down the spicy pork. “I found the birth records,” he said. “Taylor and Heidi Woodston were born April 8 at three-twenty a.m. at Coal Mountain Hospital to Claire and Joel Woodston.”

Ellie rubbed her temple. “So we know Barbara is the biological mother, but Claire gave birth to them. All the women in the picture belonged to a support group for women with fertility issues. We know that Barbara had a stillborn. She and her husband Thomas divorced shortly afterward. But if she loved children so much, why not try again?”

“Perhaps she couldn’t,” Derrick suggested. “But she could have frozen her embryos.”

That made sense. “True. And she could have hired a surrogate.”

“Maybe Claire was the surrogate,” Derrick suggested.

“But she was raising the twins herself,” Ellie said. “And in the photos the women all appeared to be friends.”

“Maybe they were. But as the years passed, Barbara could have wanted the twins back.”

Ellie bit her lip. “That’s possible. But if she did, she wouldn’t kill them.”

They sat in a strained silence for a minute both struggling to put the pieces together.

“What if Modelle blamed Barbara for reporting him to DFACS? He found out she has kids and decides to get revenge?”

“But how would he have found that out?” Derrick said.

“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “He could have been stalking her.”

“So he saw her meeting the other women, did some digging and learned how they met. Then he broke into Delilah Short’s office to get the names of the children?”

Ellie felt like they were pounding their heads against the wall. “That would be a lot,” she said. “Another possibility is that Barbara and her husband froze her embryos. Maybe her husband Thomas didn’t know she gave them to Claire. He finds out somehow and decided to kill the girls to punish Barbara.”

Ellie pulled her phone and called Laney. “Sheriff Waters should have collected a DNA sample from Thomas Thacker by now. I need you to run a paternity test and determine if he was the twins’ biological father or if Joel Woodston was.”