Chapter 13 - Midnight at the Marina
The sound of my own breath roared in my ears like a tsunami.
Eli.
They had touched my child.
The panic that usually paralyzes a person didn't come. Instead, something ancient, merciless, and crystalline snapped into place behind my ribs. The woman who had wept over cold divorce papers in a sterile kitchen was dead. The woman who had rebuilt a twenty-million-dollar laboratory from the ashes of betrayal took her place.
I reached out, picked up Victoria St. Claire’s antique jade cane, and snapped it across my knee with a single, violent crack.
The ivory head clattered across the polished floor. Victoria gasped, taking an involuntary step back, her pale eyes wide with shock.
"Gordon," I said without looking back. "Activate Protocol Zero."
Victoria frowned, confused. "Protocol Zero? There is no Protocol Zero in the charter."
Gordon Blackwell smiled—a slow, terrifying, wolfish grin that made Colette instantly push her chair back in alarm.
"The St. Claire Charter of 1974," Gordon said, reaching into his pocket and pressing a crimson transponder button, "governed the land grant, Victoria. But two hours ago, Elena transferred seventy percent of the compound’s patent ownership to an entity you didn't account for: the Canadian Coast Guard and the Department of National Defence Maritime Auxiliary."
Down below, the sirens of the federal marshals suddenly cut out.
From the shadows of the dry dock, four heavy armored vehicles bearing the maple leaf insignia of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and military tactical units rolled into the light, blocking the exits. The marshals Victoria had bought off were instantly surrounded, their weapons ordered down over blaring bullhorns.
"Did you really think," I whispered, stepping so close to Colette that she pressed herself against the leather backrest, "that after watching my husband plot against me for seven years, I wouldn't wiretap my own penthouse suite?"
I pulled my phone from my trench coat, tapping the screen once.
A live camera feed appeared. It showed Eli sitting calmly in the private terminal lounge, eating an ice cream cone, with Barnaby resting his massive head on Eli’s lap. Flanking them were not Victoria’s agents, but four heavily armed members of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, led by my father’s former lab director, Colonel Miller.
"Eli was never in your custody, Colette," I whispered. "You picked up an undercover operative’s child with a decoy escort. And every single federal marshal who signed that illegal warrant has just been arrested for treason and child abduction under the National Security Act."
Colette’s face went chalk white. She looked at Victoria, whose composure had completely disintegrated.
"You can't do this!" Victoria hissed, her voice trembling with fury. "We have the debt notes! We own the complex!"
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"You own paper," Gordon Blackwell barked, slamming his fist onto the table with the force of a sledgehammer. "And in ten minutes, the Vancouver Stock Exchange will open. Marcus Kane has just released the forensic evidence linking the St. Claire Syndicate to Julian Vance’s illegal offshore biological trafficking rings. Your foundation’s assets have been frozen across seven sovereign jurisdictions."
***
