Chapter 36 - The Phantom Twin
The wind howling over Lake Winnipesaukee sounded like a dying animal. Black smoke and boiling steam still rose from the blackened crater where the boathouse had stood moments before, but on that freezing, snow-covered bank, nobody moved. Nobody even breathed.
The satellite phone lay between Khloe’s knees, its screen glowing an eerie sapphire blue against the trampled, bloody snow.
*"Anthony? Respond immediately,"* the woman’s voice cut through the speaker again, crisp, aristocratic, and completely unaffected by the horror that had just unfolded fifty yards away. *"The transponder on the medical transport was turned off three minutes ago. If you let the local authorities reach that cabin before you secure the girl, thirty million dollars of cellular research turns into an international warrant. Acknowledge."*
Khloe’s breath caught in her throat. Her jaw trembled violently, not from the sub-zero wind that was icing her wet hair to her cheeks, but from a terror so absolute it turned her skin the color of skim milk. She pulled baby Nathan closer, wrapping her bruised arms around his trembling, blanketed body until the infant let out a tiny, stifled whimper.
"Second... child?" Khloe whispered. The words barely carried over the crackling ice. She looked down at the infant in her arms, then slowly raised her eyes to meet mine. "Marcus... what does she mean? What is she talking about?"
I collapsed onto my hands and knees beside her, coughing up mouthfuls of bitter lake water. My lungs felt like they had been scrubbed with coarse wire wool, and my ribs throbbed where Anthony had driven his boots into me beneath the surface. My fingers were numb, purple at the knuckles, but I lunged forward and snatched the satellite phone from the snow before the connection could terminate.
"Who is this?" I rasped, my vocal cords raw from screaming underwater.
There was a split-second pause on the other end of the encrypted line. The subtle rustle of heavy silk fabric. A soft, calculating intake of air.
*"Marcus,"* the voice said. It wasn't startled. It carried the chilling calm of someone who had factored my survival into a secondary spreadsheet. *"You really are an exceptionally durable pest. Where is Anthony?"*
"At the bottom of the lake," I wheezed, wiping a mixture of soot, blood, and slush from my eyes. "Under eight feet of burning timber and twenty feet of black ice. He's dead. And whatever sick game you’re playing ends right now."
A low, dry chuckle vibrated through the speaker. *"My dear boy. Anthony was an aggressive fool with an inflated sense of genetic destiny. He was never the architect of this family's future. He was merely the courier."*
Behind Khloe, Isabella—still shivering violently under the heavy woolen coat we had salvaged from the dock—scrambled forward on her elbows. When she heard the voice, her pupils dilated until her green eyes looked almost black.
"Catherine?" Isabella gasped, her voice cracking with sheer disbelief. "No... no, that’s impossible. You died three years ago. The plane crashed off the coast of Nantucket. We held the memorial. We settled the estate!"
*"Isabella, darling,"* Catherine Vance replied smoothly, her tone dripping with mock maternal affection. *"A fifty-million-dollar offshore trust buys an extraordinary amount of dental records, a very convincing burned fuselage, and five years of complete legal silence from the Massachusetts coroner's office. You were always so easily distracted by jewelry and settlement checks. You never did look at the medical patents."*
Khloe lunged toward the phone, her voice tearing out of her chest in an agonized shriek that echoed off the pine trees. "Where is my baby?! I gave birth to Nathan! Dr. Bradley handed me one child! ONE CHILD!"
*"Dr. Bradley was paid twelve million dollars to ensure you were heavily sedated under propofol for forty-eight minutes after the first extraction, Khloe,"* Catherine said, completely devoid of empathy. *"A monoamniotic twin pregnancy. A medical miracle. Two viable embryos from a frozen harvest that your useless husband never even suspected existed. You gave birth to a boy and a girl. Did you really think Anthony and I would leave the primary genetic line in Boston?"*
The line went dead. A single, high-pitched disconnect tone pierced the freezing silence.
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Khloe dropped the blanket. Her hands flew to her own stomach, clawing desperately at the heavy fleece jacket, digging her fingers into the flesh beneath her ribs as if trying to rip through her own skin to find the phantom heartbeat she had carried nine months ago.
"Two," she sobbed, rocking back and forth in the snow, her screams tearing the morning quiet into shreds. "There were two of them inside me. Marcus! They took my baby girl while I was sleeping on that table!"
