Chapter 33 - FLIGHT INTO THE EYE OF THE STORM
"You monster," Daniel yelled, stepping forward, his knuckles balled into fists. "You strapped an explosive device to your own daughter!"
The two tactical guards immediately stepped between them, raising their weapons, but Grace casually flicked her wrist. The guards lowered their barrels and stepped back into the periphery.
Grace took three graceful steps forward, closing the distance until she stood merely inches from Daniel. The intoxicating scent of jasmine and French vanilla—the perfume she had worn on their wedding day—invaded his senses, mixing sickeningly with the smell of aviation fuel.
"I didn't strap a bomb to her, Daniel," Grace whispered softly, reaching out with an gloved hand to gently cup Lily’s wet cheek. "I strapped an insurance policy to her. Because I know you. I know your pathetic little moral compass, your naive faith in that clown Miller and his badges. If I hadn't made her lethal, you would have run. You would have hidden her in some pathetic suburban basement."
Lily leaned into Grace’s touch like a sun-starved flower. "Mommy," the girl murmured softly, the cold detachment in her eyes suddenly melting into an unnerving, desperate devotion. "I played the song. I played it just like you taught me."
"You were magnificent, my little prodigy," Grace crooned, kissing Lily’s forehead with theatrical tenderness. "You were the absolute star of the show. The entire world thinks we are dead, darling. We are free. No more courts. No more mediocre audiences. No more Grandmothers trying to throw our bloodline from balconies."
Daniel seized Grace’s lapel with one hand. The guards stepped forward with a collective click of their charging handles, but Grace held up a single finger, stopping them.
"Take it off her, Grace," Daniel pleaded, his voice breaking down from rage into raw, gut-wrenching agony. "Look at her! She’s shaking! You’ve shattered her mind! If you ever had a shred of human feeling in that black heart of yours, disarm the vest!"
Grace looked down at Daniel’s hand on her coat, then looked up into his eyes. Her expression was pitying, cold as an arctic glacier.
"She isn't shattered, Daniel. She is refined. I purged the weakness from her. Just like my mother tried to purge it from me." Grace reached into her pocket and pulled out a sleek silver cylinder. She touched a biometric sensor on the side.
A sharp *click* echoed from Lily’s chest. The flashing blue transponder switched to a steady, inert green.
The German mercenary stepped forward with surgical shears, expertly slicing the tactical straps holding the explosive harness to Lily's ribs. With practiced efficiency, he peeled the heavy vest away from the child's tiny body and locked it into a steel containment box.
Lily slumped against Daniel's chest, her breathing suddenly turning shallow, her eyes rolling back slightly as if the adrenaline that had kept her upright had evaporated the instant the device went cold.
"Lily! Lily, look at me!" Daniel fell to his knees on the concrete, cradling her head. "Can you hear me?"
"She’s exhausted, Daniel," Grace said smoothly, turning toward the open cabin of the helicopter. "The hypnotic conditioning requires heavy neuro-suppressants to keep her suggestible. She’ll sleep for the next eight hours. Board the aircraft."
"I am not going anywhere with you," Daniel spat, pulling Lily against his chest, refusing to rise.
Grace paused on the helicopter's runner, looking back over her shoulder. The wind whipped her cashmere coat around her slender frame.
"You don't understand your position, Daniel," she said, her voice dropping into a register of utter dominance. "You aren't a prisoner. You are my guest. And if you refuse to board, my men will shoot you in both knees, drag you inside, and throw your friend Detective Miller off the harbor bridge before dawn. The pilot lifts off in sixty seconds. With or without your permission."
Daniel looked down at his daughter. Her pulse was erratic, her forehead burning with an unnatural, feverish heat. She needed a hospital. She needed anti-toxins. She needed him alive.
Cursing under his breath with every curse known to man, Daniel stood, lifting Lily into his arms, and climbed into the darkened belly of the helicopter.
May you like
The door slammed shut. The latch sealed with a hydraulic hiss. The turbines screamed at maximum pitch, and with a sickening lurch of gravity, the helicopter lifted into the black storm clouds, banking hard toward the open expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
***
