Tyler called back at nine forty-seven that evening.
"Sit down," he said.
"I'm already sitting."
"Good." A pause — the kind he used when he was choosing words carefully, which he always did but more so now. "Kane Wilder's genetic profile shares a rare marker cluster with the Kingsley family line. It's not a close relationship — we're talking distant, three or four generations back. A branch that separated from the main line sometime around the early nineteen-hundreds." Another pause. "It's real, Lila. I've had it run twice."
She said nothing.
"The Kingsley records from that period are incomplete," Tyler continued. "There was a split — a legal dispute over property between two brothers in nineteen twelve. One branch stayed in New York. The other moved west, changed the family name in th
