Chapter 18 - The Mask Comes Off
The heavy titanium cylinder struck Evelyn Voss squarely between the eyes with the violent force of a thrown brick.
Her head snapped back; the automatic pistol discharged into the concrete ties with a deafening *CRACK*, the bullet ricocheting harmlessly into the dark. Evelyn shrieked, clutching her broken nose as blood poured over her fingers, stumbling backward against the iron stair rail.
"Go!" Mara roared.
Miller, running on pure adrenaline despite his shattered collarbone, shoved the heavy steel ramp door open with his good shoulder. "Julianne! Clara! Move, move, move!"
Julianne scrambled up the ramp, clutching baby Hope in one arm and pulling Lily with the other. Clara looked back at Mara for one agonizing second.
"Mara!"
"I'm right behind you, Clara! Run!"
Clara bit back her tears, clamped her teeth against the blinding pain in her abdomen, and drove herself up the ramp into the upper corridor.
On the tracks, Evelyn was scrambling across the ballast, screaming like a wounded animal, her hand sweeping through the dirt until her fingers closed around the fallen automatic. She swung the barrel toward the open ramp door where Clara was disappearing.
"You're not leaving!" Evelyn screamed.
Mara didn't give her the chance. She closed the distance in a flying tackle, driving both knees into Evelyn’s chest, slamming the billionaire woman flat onto the steel rails.
The gun fired once more into the air, the muzzle flash illuminating the violent struggle in a stark strobe of light. Mara grabbed Evelyn’s wrist, driving it down against the iron rail with crushing force until the bones popped and the pistol clattered into the grease beneath the ties.
Evelyn bucked and clawed, her designer acrylic nails tearing deep gasps into Mara’s cheek, trying to gouge her eyes out. "You're nothing! You hear me? A filthy common bodyguard! My family owns this state!"
"Your family owns a cell at Stateville," Mara snarled, pinning Evelyn’s shoulders with her knees. She grabbed Evelyn by the lapels of her blood-stained silk blouse, hauling her upright before slamming her back down onto the wooden ties. "It’s over, Evelyn. Your uncle is bleeding out in a sewer pipe. Your hotel is sealed. And your little silver-ring club doesn't even know you're dead yet."
Evelyn stopped thrashing. A bloody, horrific laugh bubbled out of her ruined nose.
"You think... you think Julian Montgomery was the head of the Circle?" Evelyn wheezed, her blood-stained teeth bared in a terrifying grimace. "You poor, ignorant bitch. Julian wasn't the head. He was just the courier."
Mara’s hands tightened on the woman’s coat. "What are you talking about?"
"Who do you think hired your security firm to guard Clara in the first place?" Evelyn whispered, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. "Who do you think arranged for your sister to be placed at the Bellwether Grand three months ago?"
The world seemed to stop spinning. The subterranean air turned sub-zero.
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"What did you say?" Mara whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
"Clara’s husband didn't die in an industrial crane collapse two years ago, Mara," Evelyn grinned, coughing dark blood onto her chin. "He was recruited. He works for the Founders. And he’s the one who traded his own unborn child to clear his nine-million-dollar debt."
