Chapter 37 - The Mother's Bloodline
Daniel didn't flinch. The cold circle of the muzzle was steady against the nape of his neck, but Daniel could hear the slight, ragged edge in Clara’s breath. She had climbed aboard alone, leaving her contractors to sweep the rocks below.
"You look surprised, darling," Clara purred, her voice dripping with sadistic amusement. "Did you really think Elizabeth was the innocent victim here? My pathetic little sister thought she could hide my father's fortune behind a trail of foster care records and a simpleton carpenter from Maine."
"You killed your own sister," Daniel said, his voice flat, dangerously quiet.
"Elizabeth was weak," Clara replied coldly, pressing the gun deeper into his flesh, forcing him to keep his hands raised. "She inherited fifty-one percent of Vance Aerospace and Defense because our father thought she had 'morals.' She wanted to dissolve our private military contracts. She wanted to donate the family trusts to humanitarian foundations. Can you imagine the waste? So I arranged a little tragedy. Unfortunately, before I could extract her private decryption keys, she hid Noah in the child welfare system under a forged identity—and hid the master key inside the DNA of her newborn infant, Maya."
Daniel’s mind locked into place. The wooden candlestick.
"The candlestick," Daniel whispered. "The antique wooden candlestick you were chasing Maya with down the hall that night. You weren't trying to hit her. You were trying to do something to her."
Clara laughed—a dry, rattling sound. "How clever you are when you're cornered. The candlestick was an antique biometric housing. It held Elizabeth’s localized gene-sequencer. If Maya’s skin touched the sensor base for ten seconds, the inheritance transfer would execute directly to my offshore shell company. But the little brat squirmed. She fell down the stairs. And you, like the heroic, meddling idiot you are, scooped her up and locked yourself in that goddamn room."
"And now?" Daniel asked, his muscles tensing, feeling the shift of weight in her boots.
"Now, the storm is ending. My helicopter has thermal imaging. They've already located the boy and the baby on the rocks. In three minutes, they will bring Maya aboard this bridge. I will scan her eye, download the accounts, and then I will put a bullet through both of their skulls while you watch."
"You missed one detail, Clara," Daniel said.
"Oh? And what's that, Daniel?"
"You're standing on an ungrounded deck plate next to a salt-water leak."
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Daniel’s left hand shot out like a striking viper. He didn't grab her gun; he grabbed the exposed 220-volt auxiliary power cable dangling from the open terminal beneath the console and drove the bare copper wires directly into the pool of sea water pooling beneath Clara’s designer combat boots.
***
