Chapter 4 - The Midnight Run
BANG.
The gunshot echoed through the house, but it didn't come from the mercenary's pistol.
The operative holding Clara suddenly dropped to his knees, a clean hole drilled through his neck. Blood sprayed across the white sofa as he collapsed forward.
Before the second mercenary could react, another shot shattered the glass window, hitting him square in the chest. He pitched backward, dead before he hit the carpet.
"Get down!" Daniel yelled, grabbing Clara and dragging her behind his desk.
Silence returned to the room, broken only by the sound of heavy rain mixing with the freezing slush outside. Then, a figure stepped through the ruined front entrance.
It was a woman. She wore a dark, oil-slicked raincoat, her face scarred with a long, jagged line running from her ear to her jawline. In her hands, she held a silenced submachine gun.
Annie gasped, her voice choking up. "Momma?!"
Helen Vance stepped into the room, lowering her weapon. She looked battered, exhausted, but her eyes burned with a lethal, unyielding fury.
"Annie," Helen breathed, rushing forward and pulling her daughter into a fierce embrace. "Thank God you made it here."
"They... they took Noah, Momma! Julian took him!" Annie sobbed into her mother's shoulder.
"I know," Helen said, pulling back and looking at Daniel. "Hello, Daniel. You’ve grown up to look just like your wretched father."
"Helen..." Daniel stood up, shaking off the shock. "Julian said you were dead."
"Julian tried to have me drowned in the Hudson River two weeks ago," Helen said grimly, reaching into her coat to swap the magazine on her weapon. "He forgot that I spent twenty years in maximum security learning how to survive people far worse than him. I’ve been tracking his mercenaries for three days."
"They're taking Noah to Zurich," Clara said, stepping forward while wiping the blood from her forehead. "Julian has a surgical team waiting. They're going to harvest his bone marrow at six tomorrow morning."
"They aren't going to Zurich," Helen said coldly. "That was a decoy for his own men. Julian’s private jet is sitting on a private airstrip in Teterboro, New Jersey right now. The surgery is taking place aboard an unregistered medical yacht anchored twelve miles off the coast of Montauk—in international waters, where local authorities can't touch him."
Daniel looked at his watch. It was 1:15 AM.
"We have less than five hours," Daniel said, his corporate composure replaced by a sudden, dangerous resolve. "If Julian wants a war for the family legacy, I'll give him one."
"You don't have the firepower, Daniel," Helen warned. "Julian has fifty armed men on that yacht."
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Daniel walked over to his desk, pulled open a bottom drawer, and lifted out a dark leather briefcase. He opened it, revealing a satellite phone and an encrypted hard drive.
"I don't need firepower," Daniel said, his eyes glittering with cold calculation. "I have the master encryption keys to Whitaker Global’s offshore accounts. I can freeze Julian’s entire empire before his plane even touches the runway."
