Chapter 95 - Bloodlines in the Shadows
I looked at the timer on the monitor: *07:42... 07:41...*
Liam’s car was moving down the winding coastal road, oblivious to the high-explosive pack concealed beneath the chassis. I could see the curve where the road intersected the rocky overlook—the very spot where Arthur Thorne had once staged his clandestine meetings.
"Step up, little sister," Victoria repeated, her voice dripping with venomous triumph. "You have Arthur's eyes. Let them do what they were born to do."
I stepped toward the heavy steel casing of the retinal terminal. The red scanning beam flared to life, reflecting in my pupils.
"Look directly into the lens," Victoria commanded, standing beside me with her hand poised over the keypad to enter her half of the cryptographic sequence.
I leaned forward, the chill of the scanner housing biting into my forehead. The machine clicked. A mechanical voice droned: *PRIMARY RETINAL SCAN INITIALIZED. DNA CONFIRMATION IN PROGRESS.*
*05:18... 05:17...*
"Enter your passphrase, Victoria," I said, keeping my voice utterly level. "Or the timer runs out before the vault recognizes us both."
Victoria sneered, stepping up to the secondary terminal and pressing her palm against the capacitive sensor while leaning her face into the matching optic ring. *SECONDARY DNA VERIFIED. WELCOME, VICTORIA THORNE.*
The steel vault emitted a deep, hydraulic hiss. Heavy locking pins retracted inside the titanium frame with a rhythmic, thunderous clang: *One. Two. Three. Four.*
"Now!" Victoria yelled, her fingers flying across the terminal’s numerical interface. "Complete the sequence!"
*03:02... 03:01...*
I stared into the optic sensor, but instead of completing the final blinking confirmation, my hand plunged into my trench coat pocket. My fingers wrapped around the heavy brass object I had pocketed from the vanity table before leaving Ravenscar Bluff—the antique, weighted telephone receiver head that I had unscrewed in the dark while Liam was sleeping.
With a feral cry of defiance, I whipped the solid brass weight out of my coat and smashed it with all my strength directly into the glass face of the optic terminal.
The screen exploded into a shower of crystalline shards and sparks.
The security console shrieked a deafening alarm. Red emergency strobes washed the corridor in crimson panic. *TERMINAL BREACH. SYSTEM OVERRIDE FAILED. LOCKDOWN IMMINENT.*
Victoria stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock and incandescent rage. "You insane bitch! You just signed your husband's death warrant!"
She lunged her thumb toward the detonation trigger on her handheld device.
"Liam isn't in that car!" I screamed, lunging forward and tackling her across the catwalk.
We slammed hard against the grated steel railing over the yawning abyss of the dry dock below. The handheld detonator slipped from Victoria’s grip, clattering through the metal grating and plummeting fifty feet into the churning sea water below.
Victoria gasped, striking me across the cheek with a vicious backhand that sent me sprawling onto the wet metal deck. Blood filled my mouth, warm and copper.
"You think you're clever, Maya?" Victoria snarled, wiping a streak of blood from her own forehead where flying glass had cut her. She drew a suppressed sidearm from her tactical holster, aiming it directly between my eyes. "If the detonator is lost, the default timer triggers automatically at zero! He’s dead anyway!"
"He isn't in the car, Victoria," a deep, thunderous voice echoed from the shadowed catwalk above.
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Before Victoria could react, a deafening shot cracked through the corridor, shattering the suppressed weapon from her grip in a burst of sparks and severed steel.
***
