Chapter 24 - The Blood in the Records
Before the mercenary’s finger could complete the trigger pull, the steel fire doors behind Richard swung inward with terrifying velocity, smashing violently into the back of the second guard.
The impact drove the armed man forward onto his knees with a dull thud. A tall, broad-shouldered figure in a soaked black oilskin coat stepped through the opening, swinging a twenty-four-inch chrome oxygen canister with devastating, two-handed force. The heavy steel cylinder struck the first mercenary across the side of his tactical helmet with the sound of a baseball bat hitting an iron pole. The man collapsed instantly, his weapon skittering across the slick floor toward Vance’s boots.
Richard spun around, his composed mask shattering into utter disbelief. “What is the meaning of—”
Standing in the doorway, blood dripping from a deep cut across her forehead, her soaked emerald blouse clinging to her skin, was Vivienne Ashford.
She looked like a corpse dragged from the bottom of a swamp. Her left arm hung limp at her side, clearly dislocated at the shoulder, but her right hand held a heavy, snub-nosed .38 revolver taken from the glove compartment of her abandoned Mercedes. Her teeth were bared in a feral, blood-smeared grin.
“Did you really think,” Vivienne rasped, her voice thick with lake water and bile, “that I would trust *your* driver at Mile Marker 14, you arrogant son of a bitch?”
“Vivienne,” Richard said, his voice dropping an octave as he backed away toward the glass partition of the nursery. “You’re delusional. Put the gun down.”
“Your man tried to brake-check me into the quarry ravine!” she screamed, taking two unsteady steps forward, the revolver shaking in her grip. “He didn't realize I kept the old service road key in my boot. I ran him down with the gardener's truck before he could draw his weapon!”
Vance moved instantly, keeping his service pistol trained on Richard while kicking the fallen mercenary's submachine gun into the nursery through the specimen transfer hatch. “Both of you, drop your weapons! Drop them now!”
Vivienne didn’t look at Vance. Her eyes, bloodshot and wide with manic fury, were locked entirely on her husband. “He doesn't want the baby because of the trust, Detective! He wants the baby dead because the baby’s blood proves what he did twenty years ago!”
Nora pressed her hand against the nursery glass, watching the nightmare unfold in the narrow corridor. “What is she talking about?”
Ethan stepped up beside Nora, his eyes wide as he stared at the woman who had terrorized his home for five years. “Vivienne... what did he do?”
“Claire isn't his wife!” Vivienne shrieked, laughing hysterically as blood bubbled at the corner of her lips. “Claire was never his legal wife! He staged the wedding in Saint-Tropez with a paid actor playing the French registrar! Claire is the legal daughter of Arthur Vance—the former district attorney your father ruined twenty years ago!”
Detective Vance’s body went completely rigid. The gun in his hand dropped half an inch before he jerked it back up, his face draining of all color. “What did you say?”
“Arthur Vance had two children before he ‘committed suicide’ in the county lockup,” Vivienne spat, her wild eyes shifting to the detective. “A son who went to the state police academy... and a four-year-old daughter who was put into the state foster system under her mother’s maiden name: Claire Hastings! Richard adopted her through three layers of trust funds, raised her at arms-length in boarding schools, and then ‘married’ her so he could legally absorb the mineral deeds Arthur Vance had hidden in her name!”
Nora looked back through the interior glass at Claire, who lay in the adjacent neurological room two doors down, still hooked to an IV drip, entirely oblivious that her entire life had been a staged theater of theft.
“The child,” Vance whispered, his voice shaking with a rage so terrifying the lights seemed to dim further. “Whose baby is that?”
“She’s yours, Detective!” Vivienne screamed, pointing the revolver directly at Richard’s forehead. “Arthur Vance’s estate had a reversionary clause! If Claire died without natural heirs, the deeds reverted to the surviving direct sibling—to *you*! Richard couldn't let Claire have an heir, but he couldn't let the Vance bloodline die until the twenty-year statute expired this midnight! He took your sister’s frozen embryos from the clinic in Boston and had them carried by an unwed girl at St. Anthony’s! That baby is your blood niece! That baby is the legal owner of every square inch of the Ashford industrial empire!”
Richard didn't wait for her to finish.
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With blinding, desperate speed, Richard drew a concealed ceramic pistol from the interior pocket of his overcoat and fired two shots point-blank into Vivienne’s chest.
***
