Chapter 14 - The Blood in the Milk
Harrison stared at the monitor, his vision tunneling into blackness. The air inside the mobile command unit felt thick as motor oil.
"Mr. Vance?" the FBI director grabbed Harrison’s arm, but Harrison ripped himself free with savage violence.
"Marcus!" Harrison roared into his satellite phone. "Lock down the lodge! Now! Nobody goes in, nobody goes out!"
"What is it, sir?" Marcus’s voice crackled through the speaker, accompanied by the muffled whine of Montana wind outside the ranch windows.
"The casket was empty!" Harrison yelled, his voice cracking with hysteria. "It was a setup! Evelyn was never in that ground! She's alive, Marcus! She staged the entire hospital deathbed! And she left a note about Maya!"
There was a sudden, violent thud over the receiver. Then, the shrill scream of Claire echoed through the line.
"Marcus?! Marcus, report!" Harrison screamed, sprinting out of the FBI van into the pouring Brooklyn rain, desperate to get back to the airport.
"Breach!" Marcus shouted over the phone, the distinct *crack-crack-crack* of suppressed submachine gun fire rattling the audio feed. "Perimeter fence on the north ridge is down! We have multiple armed hostiles in winter camouflage! They didn't come to kill, Mr. Vance—they cut the generator lines! They’re using tear gas!"
"Maya! Where is Maya?!"
"Claire has her in the safe room beneath the wine cellar!" Marcus shouted, his words punctuated by the deafening boom of a twelve-gauge shotgun. "I took down two of them! They're wearing private military insignias—Valence Tactical! That’s an elite private contractor out of Zurich!"
Harrison scrambled into the back of his waiting armored Maybach. "Driver, JFK! Clear all runways! I don’t care if you have to bribe air traffic control, get that Gulfstream in the air in twenty minutes!"
As the car lurched into the rain-slicked New York streets, Marcus’s voice returned over the line, strained and ragged.
"Sir... one of the hostiles I wounded... he’s dead. Cyanide capsule in his molar. But Harrison... I checked his vest."
Marcus paused, his breath hitching.
"What was on the vest, Marcus?!"
"A biometric lockbox," Marcus whispered, the background filled with the hum of emergency backup batteries. "It had a refrigerated syringe pre-loaded with a customized genetic retrovirus. And a set of pediatric medical restraints labeled: *SUBJECT 04 - MAYA VANCE*."
Harrison felt the world tilt on its axis. "Subject? What do you mean *Subject*?!"
"Harrison..." Marcus’s voice dropped into a terrifying hush. "Claire just ran the preliminary blood work on the milk bottle Maya was drinking from before bed. It was laced with a synthetic immunosuppressant. Someone inside this house has been dosing Maya for months."
Harrison’s phone slipped an inch in his sweat-soaked palm. "Claire? But Claire raised Evelyn..."
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"Claire is dead, Harrison," Marcus said grimly. "I found her by the pantry door. Her neck was snapped from behind. Whoever is inside the safe room with your daughter right now... isn't Claire."
***
