Chapter 25 - The Monster Behind the Velvet
"She won't let Emma live even if you give her Noah," Claire said, her voice shaking violently as she gripped the dashboard. "You don't understand what Evelyn Vance is, Daniel. She doesn't negotiate. She eradicates variables."
"We have fifty-four minutes, Claire," Daniel said, slamming the truck into drive and stomping on the accelerator. The tires shrieked against the wet pavement as the truck rocketed toward downtown Boston. "I am not letting our daughter suffocate in an iron box."
"Listen to me!" Claire grabbed his arm, her blackened fingernails digging into his skin. "Evelyn’s condition isn't just bone marrow failure. She was the one who authorized the unauthorized stem-cell trials on the Vance clinic patients five years ago. When the FDA launched their criminal inquiry, she needed a clean financial vehicle to liquidate the offshore accounts. That was you, Daniel! That was the Whitmore shipping infrastructure! She didn't marry you for love, and she didn't even marry you just for the marrow. She married you because the Whitmore maritime fleet gives her diplomatic shipping clearance through three international ports!"
Daniel’s mind raced through the past three years. The contracts she had asked him to sign over breakfast. The customs waivers for the refrigerated cargo containers moving between Boston, Rotterdam, and Zurich. He had signed them without looking, lost in the fog of his fabricated grief and Evelyn’s intoxicating warmth.
"She’s moving a clinical transport," Daniel said, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. "She isn't just going to Atlantic Tower. She has an exit strategy."
"The hangar," Claire gasped. "Hangar Nine at Logan International. She bought a Gulfstream G650 through a shell company last autumn. If she gets both children's cord blood, she has enough biological material to sustain her treatments in a private facility in Zurich for the next ten years. She’s going to take Noah, leave Emma's body in the pod to rot, and leave you to take the fall for the clinic murders!"
Daniel looked down at Noah. The little boy was staring at his father with eyes full of terrifying understanding.
"Dad," Noah whispered. "The lady had a big black suitcase with needles. She put it in the silver car before we went to the dock."
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Daniel reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the small, brass key he had taken from the lockbox in Chapter 13—the key to the private electrical bypass beneath Atlantic Tower.
"We aren't walking through the front lobby," Daniel said, his voice dropping into a register of icy lethal resolve. "We’re going through the maintenance spine."
