Chapter 6 - Shadows in the Penthouse
Clara’s mind raced with the terrifying clarity that only a mother fighting for her child’s life can possess.
She looked down at Harrison. In his trembling, slack hand, he still held the silver USB drive. Beside him on the floor lay a heavy brass candelabra that had fallen during the earlier scuffle.
She couldn't fight two trained mercenaries with a candelabra. But she didn't have to fight them; she only had to make them look the wrong way.
Clara carefully leaned Harrison against the base of the credenza. She unzipped her jacket, took Lily, and gently set the toddler down between Harrison’s limp body and the mahogany wall, completely shielding her from view.
“Lily,” Clara whispered, her voice barely a breath. “Stay with Daddy. Hold his hand. Don’t make a peep for Mommy.”
Lily looked up with wide, solemn blue eyes and nodded once, her tiny fingers curling around Harrison’s limp thumb.
Clara took the heavy brass candelabra in her right hand. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her smartphone—the cheap, cracked prepaid device she had used to survive on the streets for the past year. She set the alarm to ring in ten seconds, turned the volume to maximum, and threw the phone with all her might across the open rotunda toward the eastern grand staircase.
It landed with a sharp *clatter* against the marble thirty yards away.
Three seconds later, the piercing alarm began to screech.
“Target east!” the lead mercenary barked. Both men snapped their weapons toward the grand staircase and broke into a tactical sprint, their boots squeaking against the polished floor as they moved away from the study.
“Now,” Clara hissed.
She grabbed Harrison beneath the arms and hauled him forward with superhuman effort. Harrison groaned, his heels dragging against the marble, but his survival instinct kicked in, his legs weakly pumping to assist. Clara scooped Lily onto her hip with her other arm, moving in a desperate, lunging crouch across the exposed rotunda into the private study.
She kicked the door shut behind them, slamming the heavy deadbolt into place.
The study was dark, illuminated only by the flashes of lightning outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Clara deposited Harrison onto the leather sofa. “Harrison! Where is it? Which drawer?!”
Harrison’s eyes rolled back in his head. A faint rattling sound was beginning in his throat. “Left... mahogany desk... secret catch... behind Arthur’s portrait...” he choked out, his chest barely rising.
Clara sprinted to the massive executive desk. Her hands frantically explored the underside of the heavy drawers. Her fingers brushed against a small, recessed toggle switch. She pressed it with all her strength.
*CLICK.*
A false panel at the base of the desk popped open. Inside lay an olive-drab military emergency medical kit. Clara ripped the zippers apart.
Inside were three pre-filled auto-injectors: one marked *EPINEPHRINE*, one marked *NALOXONE*, and one labeled in Arthur Sterling’s bold handwriting: *ATROPINE SULFATE - 2MG - BIO-TOXIN PROTOCOL.*
Clara grabbed the atropine injector, ripped off the safety cap, and ran back to the sofa.
“Harrison, stay with me!”
Without hesitating, Clara slammed the auto-injector directly through Harrison’s slacks into the muscle of his outer thigh.
The spring-loaded needle detonated with a sharp *CLACK*.
Harrison’s entire body arched off the sofa. A violent, guttural gasp tore from his lungs as the high-dose atropine flooded his bloodstream, counteracting the parasympathetic paralysis caused by the aconite. His eyes flew wide open, the pupils dilating instantly. His chest heaved as he sucked in air like a drowning man breaking through the surface of frozen ice.
“Breathe!” Clara ordered, tears streaming down her face as she pressed both hands against his sternum. “Breathe, damn you!”
Harrison convulsed once, twice, and then rolled onto his side, violently coughing and vomiting the toxic wine onto the hardwood floor.
At that exact moment, the heavy deadbolt on the study door shuddered.
*THUD! THUD! THUD!*
A heavy boot was kicking the wood from the outside.
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“Open the door, Clara,” Evelyn’s voice drifted through the splintering wood, mocking, smooth, and utterly merciless. “The boys cleared Marcus. It’s just you, a dying billionaire, and that little brat. You have nowhere left to run.”
***
