Chapter 6 - The Unraveling
The drop through the freezing storm was a nightmare of screaming wind and blinding rain. David held me tight, his grip unyielding, until he pulled the ripcord at fifteen hundred feet. The canopy opened with a violent snap, jerking us skyward before we began a slow, rocking descent toward the shoreline.
Below us, half a mile out in the churning black surf, the burning wreckage of the jet was already sinking beneath the waves. Victoria Whitmore and Hale were gone, swallowed by the cold Atlantic.
"Where is Emma?!" I screamed over the wind.
David pointed off to the left, toward a narrow stretch of rocky beach. Floating down through the darkness was the massive white canopy of the cargo chute carrying Emma’s medical gurney.
We hit the wet sand hard, tumbling through the foam before David managed to cut our lines. We didn't waste a second. We sprinted through the freezing surf toward the point where Emma’s chute had landed.
The gurney was resting on the rocks, partially submerged in seawater. Emma was still strapped in, completely still, her pale face illuminated by the distant glow of the burning plane crash.
"Emma!" I fell to my knees beside her, unstrapping her, pulling her cold body into my arms.
Her skin was ice-cold. I pressed my ear to her chest.
Nothing. No breath. No pulse.
"No, no, no! Emma, please!" I began desperate chest compressions, tears pouring freely down my face, mixing with the saltwater. "Not after everything! Please, baby, come back!"
David knelt beside me, his hands shaking as he reached into his tactical vest and pulled out a auto-injector of epinephrine. "Anna, step back!"
He jammed the needle directly into her sternum.
For three agonizing seconds, the beach was dead silent except for the sound of crashing waves.
Then, Emma’s body violently convulsed. She gasped, taking a deep, agonizing breath of air, coughing up water, her eyes fluttering open.
"Mom...?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the sea.
"I'm here, baby," I sobbed, holding her face in my hands. "I'm right here. You're safe."
Her unfocused eyes drifted slowly to the man standing behind me. Her brow furrowed through the pain.
"Dad...?" she breathed. "They told me... you were dead..."
David dropped to his knees, clutching her cold hand, pressing it to his face. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I'm so sorry I had to stay in the dark to keep you safe. But it's over now."
"Is it?" I said, standing up, my voice suddenly turning ice-cold as I looked at my husband.
David looked up at me, the emotional warmth in his eyes instantly replaced by caution.
"Anna..."
"Fifteen years, David," I said, drawing my sidearm and pointing it straight at his chest. "You let me grieve you. You let me raise our daughter alone in hiding. You let her marry Carter Whitmore, knowing what they were! You used her as bait to draw out Hale and the Syndicate!"
"I had to!" David shouted, staying on his knees, his hands raised in surrender. "The Syndicate had infiltrated the highest levels of the Department of Justice! If I hadn't faked my death, they would have executed all three of us fifteen years ago! I needed Hale to believe he was in control until he exposed every branch of the network!"
"You used our daughter!" I screamed, my finger trembling on the trigger.
"I didn't know about Carter!" David pleaded, his voice breaking. "I was in Europe cutting off their financial channels! By the time I realized Carter and Victoria had targeted Emma, she was already locked inside that estate! I couldn't get close without triggering Hale’s execution order! The black ledger... the anonymous texts... that was me, Anna! I brought you into the game because you were the only person alive capable of breaking her out!"
I stared at him, my heart torn between the overwhelming love for the man I thought I had lost and absolute fury for the chess player he had become.
Before I could answer, a blinding beam of light cut through the fog from the cliffs above the beach.
A massive fleet of vehicles—dozens of them—was driving down the access trail toward the sand. Searchlights pinned us where we stood.
"Anna Mercer! David Mercer!" a voice boomed through a loudspeaker from the top of the cliff. "Drop your weapons! You are completely surrounded!"
I looked at David. "Is that Hale's people?"
May you like
David looked at the emblems on the sides of the incoming armored trucks. A cold, dark smile spread across his scarred face.
"No," David said. "That’s the President's personal task force. The ledger I took from the Whitmore safe... it just went live on every news network in the world."
