THE ICE IN HER VEINS: The Secret My Trophy Wife Buried in My Son’s Nursery

The Maybach tore through the deluge at ninety miles an hour, tires hydroplaning across ribbons of ocean water washing over Highway 1. Daniel’s knuckles were bleeding from the broken glass, his shirt soaked with sweat and rain. His eyes never left the road, but his mind was drowning in a nightmare of speed and shadows.

Devil’s Basin was an abandoned naval testing station three miles north of Mendocino, perched on a crumbling promontory that jutted directly into the violent surf. It had been decommissioned in the 1970s, bought through a dummy corporation by the Montgomery family thirty years ago. Local fishermen claimed the waters around the concrete bunker were cursed; ships lost steering, and the bodies of drownings never washed ashore.

Daniel’s phone rang. It was Miller.

"Daniel! Where are you? State police found Rosa’s car overturned on Route 1!"

"Is Noah there?" Daniel roared over the engine noise.

"No! The boy was taken! Rosa is alive, but she’s in an ambulance headed for Redding with three broken ribs. Daniel, listen to me—do not go to the Basin alone! I have a federal SWAT team boarding Blackhawk helicopters in Sacramento right now!"

"They’ll be too late," Daniel said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, icy calm. "The custody deadline expires at noon. It’s 11:15, Miller. Vance and Evelyn aren't waiting for a trial. They’re executing the final clause."

"What clause?"

"The trust document," Daniel said, remembering the legal phrasing from the scanned paper. "'Should the father perish before the fourth birthday, custody reverts to the biological mother. Should the mother be deceased or incarcerated, custody reverts to Dr. Vance.' Evelyn isn't supposed to survive this, Miller. Vance is playing her, too."

On the other end of the line, Miller went dead silent. "My God. The prison fire... Vance didn't just break her out. He set her up as an escaped fugitive. The moment she kills you and takes Noah, Vance will eliminate her, claim he rescued his nephew from a psychotic escaped convict, and walk away with eighty billion dollars in pharmaceutical equity."

"I know," Daniel whispered. "Which means I don't just have to fight Evelyn. I have to fight the man pulling her strings."

Daniel killed the phone and threw it out the window into the crashing waves below. He didn't want SWAT. He didn't want hostage negotiators with megaphones offering terms to monsters.

He pulled the Maybach into the gravel turnoff of Devil’s Basin.

Through the rain, the skeletal outline of the concrete observation tower rose from the rocks like a rotting tombstone. Parked at the base of the cliffs was an armored transport truck and two black SUVs.

And standing atop the concrete parapet sixty feet above the boiling waves, her white cashmere coat billowing in the gale like the wings of a predatory bird, stood Evelyn Montgomery.