In the dim, fluorescent light of Betty’s Blue Plate, the face staring back at me wasn’t mine, yet it was carved from the same bone structure. It was an older woman—perhaps in her late fifties—with sharp, intelligent eyes, a faint smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and a necklace that made my chest constrict.

"Hold on!" Harrison roared, his usual cool composure shattering in a heartbeat as he lunged across the console to shove me and Ethan down onto the floorboards.

CRASH.

The impact was like a bomb going off. Our SUV slammed into the side rail of the interstate, showering the cabin with flying sparks and the deafening shriek of tearing metal. The airbags deployed with a violent pop, filling the air with the acrid, powdery stench of chemical propellant.

Ethan let out a terrified cry, curling into a ball beneath my legs as I threw my arms over his head.

"Miller! Status!" Harrison shouted, coughing through the white smoke as he kicked his door open against the wreckage.

There was no reply from the front seat. The driver’s side window had been completely caved in by a heavy iron beam extending from the side of the rogue semi.

"Out! Now!" Harrison grabbed me by the back of my jacket, yanking me toward the rear emergency hatch of the SUV just as a series of sharp, rhythmic pings hammered against the vehicle's reinforced armor.

Gunshots.

The glass of the rear window starred and spiderwebbed, white-hot impacts punching through the bulletproof laminate. Someone out there in the fog was shooting at us with military-grade armor-piercing rounds.

"Ethan, can you run?" I screamed, hauling my brother up by his collar as Harrison blew the rear hatch open with a manual override lever. The cold night air rushed in, carrying the smell of burning rubber and wet pine.

"I... I can try," Ethan choked out, his face pale as paper.

"Don't think, just move!" Harrison shoved us both out into the muddy ditch beside the highway.

Bullets chewed up the turf inches from our boots as we scrambled down the steep embankment into the dense thicket of pine trees lining the interstate. The shadows swallowed us instantly, the canopy of branches blocking out the glare of the burning semi above.

We hit the dirt, sliding down a muddy slope until we crashed into the freezing, waist-deep water of a swollen creek.

"Keep your heads down," Harrison hissed, pressing his back against a concrete drainage culvert while drawing a sleek, suppressed pistol from a holster beneath his suit jacket. His movements were terrifyingly practiced—not the fumbling panic of a billionaire out of water, but the muscle memory of a man who had fought for his life before.

"Who are they?" I panted, water soaking through my diner uniform, shivering so hard my teeth chattered against each other. "How did they find us so fast?!"

"Because," Harrison said grimly, his eyes scanning the tree line above us where flashlight beams had begun to sweep through the branches, "the leak isn't outside the company. It’s on the board of directors. And they know that if you reach my estate in Manhattan alive, the entire foundation of their multi-billion-dollar empire crumbles."

"I don't care about their empire!" I whispered fiercely, gripping Ethan's cold hand beneath the dark water. "I just want my brother to live!"

"Then you need to listen to me very carefully, Claire," Harrison said, turning his piercing gaze toward me. "The men up there aren't just hitmen. They work for Project Janus—the very black-ops research division my uncle tried to shut down twenty-two years ago. And they didn't just steal that box from your house."

He reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a small, waterproof data drive that he must have snatched from the vehicle before we bailed.

"They were looking for the encryption key to my uncle's final research. The formula your mother spent twenty years hiding."

"What formula?" Ethan managed to gasp, shivering violently.