Chapter 33 - Mirror in the Shadows
Julian didn't hesitate. He kicked the service door off its track with a deafening crash, raising his weapon as he cleared the threshold.
The interior of the hangar was illuminated by stark industrial work lamps hanging from the steel girders above. In the center sat an unmarked twin-engine executive helicopter, its rotors tied down. Standing beside the open cabin door were three men in tactical vests, their weapons drawn.
And tied to a folding metal chair beneath the helicopter's nose was the girl.
When my eyes found her, my heart violently seized in my chest.
She wasn't a child. She was a young woman of twenty-six, wearing torn canvas overalls and a grease-stained wool sweater. Her dark hair was matted with sweat, but her features—the high, sharp cheekbones, the slight arch of her dark brows, the curve of her jawline—were a terrifying, undeniable reflection of the face I saw in the mirror every morning.
She looked at me through swollen, tear-filled eyes, her breath catching in her throat as though she were looking at a ghost.
"Drop your weapons!" Julian's voice boomed through the hangar with the force of thunder, his sightline locked on the man standing nearest the girl—a tall, scarred mercenary holding a heavy automatic pistol to the side of her head.
The man in charge, standing near the helicopter's cockpit with a tablet in his hand, slowly turned around. He wore an expensive gray wool coat over body armor, and his face was cold, calculating, and completely unfamiliar.
"You're late, Miss Sterling," the leader sneered, not lowering his sidearm. "And you brought a sniper who should have died twenty minutes ago. Tell me, how does it feel to meet your mirror image while her executioner has his finger on the trigger?"
"Let her go," I said, stepping past Julian's shoulder, leveling the carbine with both hands, my finger resting lightly against the trigger shoe. "You wanted the Sterling reserves. You have the access codes. If you pull that trigger, the escrow trace locks the node permanently. You won't see a single cent."
The leader chuckled—a dry, rattling sound. "You really don't understand what this is about, do you, Clara? You think this is about money? The money was just a distraction to make sure you brought yourself down from High Ridge."
"Who sent you?" Julian demanded, his voice dangerously low, his trigger finger tightening by fractions of a millimeter. "Vance is in federal custody. The Senator is in an interrogation cell."
"Those old fools were just the investors," the man smiled, tapping the side of his tablet. "They built their empire on Victoria Sterling's stolen technology. But the real owners... the ones who paid for Victoria's research into the synthetic enzyme patents that built the Vance pharmaceutical fortune... they never left the board."
The girl tied to the chair let out a muffled scream through the heavy silver duct tape over her mouth, throwing her weight sideways to knock the chair over.
The distraction was less than a tenth of a second, but it was all Julian needed.
Julian fired two rounds into the chest plate of the leader. The kinetic force threw the man backward against the landing gear of the helicopter.
Chaos erupted in an instant.
The mercenary holding the gun to the girl swung his weapon toward Julian, but I squeezed the trigger of the carbine. The unfamiliar kick slammed into my shoulder as three rounds tore through the gravel and concrete at his feet. The ricochet clipped his thigh, sending him crashing down onto the tarmac with a roar of agony.
The third operative lunged from behind the fuselage, spraying automatic fire across our position. Julian grabbed my collar, hauling me behind a row of steel tool chests as bullets chewed through the thin metal siding, spraying sparks, grease, and shrapnel into our hair.
"Cover me!" Julian shouted, pulling a flashbang from his tactical belt.
I didn't think; I leaned out from behind the tool cabinet and laid down a suppressing burst of fire toward the helicopter tail. Julian hurled the canister high into the rafters.
The detonation was blinding and concussive, shaking the dust from the steel beams fifty feet above. A high-pitched ringing consumed my ears.
Julian surged forward through the smoke like a predator, clearing the distance in two seconds. I heard the sharp, brutal sounds of hand-to-hand combat—a sickening crunch of bone, a choked gasp—and then the third mercenary collapsed limp against the concrete floor.
Julian spun, checking the corners with his barrel raised. "Clear!"
I dropped the carbine and ran directly to the overturned chair.
The girl was struggling desperately against the nylon zip-ties binding her wrists and ankles. Her eyes were wide with terror, tracing every contour of my face as I dropped to my knees in the dirt beside her.
"Hold still, please, hold still," I whispered, pulling a pocket knife from my jacket and slicing through the heavy tape over her mouth.
She gasped for air, coughing violently as the cold hangar breeze hit her throat. When she finally looked at me, her voice was hoarse, trembling, and utterly bewildered.
"You... you have her eyes," she whispered. "Victoria's eyes."
"I'm Clara," I said, my hands shaking as I cut through the ties on her wrists. "I'm your sister."
She grabbed my wrists with surprising, desperate strength, her fingers digging into my skin. "Clara... you shouldn't have come here. The helicopter... they weren't waiting to fly me out."
My heart went ice-cold. "What are you talking about?"
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"It's a trap," she choked out, pointing with a bruised, trembling finger toward the cargo bay of the aircraft. "There's no fuel in the tanks. It's packed with industrial thermite. They set a dead-man trigger to the hangar's power grid!"
***
