Chapter 23 - The Cold Light of Treason
The seawater was freezing, tasting of diesel and brine.
I clung to an abandoned inflatable zodiac tied beneath the decaying wooden pilings of the old cannery dock, holding Chloe above the waterline with one arm while my legs kicked against the violent ocean swell. Above, the island was burning. A massive pillar of black smoke climbed into the starless sky as secondary explosions rocked the mountain—the crypt, the Vance manor, the entire facility was being systematically obliterated by naval artillery.
Chloe was shivering uncontrollably. Her skin had taken on a terrifying grey tint, her breathing shallow and raspy.
"Mommy... where is Daddy?" she whispered against my ear, her teeth chattering so hard they clicked.
I swallowed the lump of burning acid in my throat. How could I explain to a three-year-old that the man she remembered as Daddy had been an accomplice to her living death, yet had just traded his life so she could breathe?
"He’s... he’s taking care of something, my love," I whispered, pulling the emergency tarp from the boat's utility box and wrapping it over her small body. "Close your eyes. Think of the garden. Remember the yellow sunflowers we planted?"
"They died," she murmured softly, her eyelids fluttering shut. "Auntie Victoria said flowers die in the dark."
"They don't die," I choked out, pulling the outboard motor’s pull-cord with frantic, feral strength. "They just wait for the sun. Mommy is taking you to the sun."
The engine coughed, sputtered, and finally roared to life with a noisy, mechanical hum. I shoved off into the black waves, cutting through the fog away from the offshore warship whose searchlights were methodically scanning the open water.
Two hours later, the zodiac scraped against the rocky shoreline of the mainland near an abandoned fishing hamlet. My phone, sealed in a waterproof pouch around my waist, buzzed incessantly the moment it caught a terrestrial cell tower.
Dozens of alerts flashed on the cracked screen.
*BREAKING: Vance Pharmaceuticals Offshore Research Facility Destroyed in Catastrophic Gas Explosion. No Survivors Reported.*
*CRIME ALERT: Clara Vance Wanted for Kidnapping and Grave Robbery. Federal Warrants Issued. Suspect Considered Armed and Extremely Dangerous.*
My breath caught. They had already framed the narrative. I wasn't a mother rescuing her stolen child; I was a deranged, grieving widow who had dug up her dead daughter’s remains and fled into the night. My face was plastered across every national news portal, accompanied by a fabricated psychiatric history provided by the Vance family lawyers.
They had weaponized the entire legal system against me in less than three hours.
I opened the encrypted messaging app Julian had given me weeks ago, before he was vaporized aboard his yacht. One solitary message sat in the outbox, sent by a dead-man switch thirty seconds after his transponder ceased:
*Safehouse: 442 St. Jude’s Lane, Old Port. Contact: Dr. Lin. Do not trust the authorities. Your father has friends in every department. And Clara... Andrew didn't know about the boy. Ask your father about Marcus.*
Marcus.
The world seemed to drop beneath my feet. I looked down at Chloe, sleeping fitfully on the damp sand. In my mind, memories of my pregnancy four years ago flickered like a broken projector. The private clinic. The delivery room. The doctors telling me that only one twin had survived the emergency cesarean section—that the boy had been stillborn, his body cremated per hospital biohazard protocols.
They hadn't just stolen Chloe.
May you like
They had taken her brother four years before.
***
