Chapter 37 - The Ghost of Catherine Vance
Sirens wailed in the far distance, their high-pitched electronic screams cutting through the dense pine forests of the New Hampshire valley. The fire from the boathouse had sent a column of thick black smoke into the pale dawn sky that could likely be seen from five miles away across the lake. The local sheriff’s department and the state troopers were coming.
"Marcus, we have to move," Isabella said, her voice shaking violently as she pulled herself up against a pine tree. "If the state police find us here with Anthony's body in the water, with firearms scattered on the dock... they will lock us in interrogation rooms for seventy-two hours. By the time they figure out who Catherine is, that plane will have touched down in Europe."
I didn't answer right away. I was staring down at Anthony's phone.
The screen had locked, but the last notification on the splash screen remained visible before it dimmed: *LUMEN-7 PRIVATE AIRWAY: DEPARTURE HANSCOM AIR BASE 04:12 EST. DESTINATION: ZURICH-KLOTEN (LSZH). PASSENGER COUNT: 2. CARGO: BIO-ISOLATION POD #4.*
It was already 6:15 AM.
That private jet had left Massachusetts two hours ago while we were still bleeding in the snow, fighting for our lives on the dock. It was currently flying at forty-one thousand feet over the North Atlantic, carrying Khloe’s stolen daughter toward a private clinic in the Swiss Alps.
"Marcus!" Khloe grabbed the lapels of my soaked jacket, her fingernails biting through the down fabric into my skin. Her face was drenched in tears, dirt, and sweat, but her eyes possessed a terrifying, incandescent clarity. "Look at me! Look at me! We are not letting them take her! We are not going to a hospital, we are not talking to the police, and we are not waiting for a search warrant that will take six months to clear an international border! We go now!"
"Khloe, you just survived a kidnapping, you're hypothermic, and Nathan needs medical attention," I urged, trying to steady her trembling shoulders. "Look at him. He's shivering."
"He is cold, Marcus, but he is breathing!" she roared, her voice booming with an authority I had never heard from her in all our years of marriage. "My daughter is in the hands of a woman who faked her own death to harvest human embryos! Do you understand what Catherine Vance is? She’s a monster! She doesn't want a grandchild—she wants an organ donor! She wants genetic therapy material for her own failing heart! That was the rumor in the family ten years ago! That's why Anthony was obsessed with the IVF clinic!"
A cold shock wave traveled down my spine.
The storage bills. The secret payments Anthony had made to the cryogenic depository in South Boston. The strange medical jargon Isabella had dropped weeks ago about "cellular preservation." It had never been about Anthony wanting an heir to blackmail Khloe.
It had been about Catherine Vance. The matriarch who disappeared before her degenerative vascular disease could kill her, using her sociopathic son as an errand boy to harvest fresh, genetically identical fetal tissue to keep her own decrepit body alive.
"The keys," I muttered, turning sharply toward the tree line where Anthony had parked his black Land Rover Defender an hour earlier. "He left the ignition running when he ambushed us."
We ran.
Every step through the two-foot snowdrifts was agonizing. My knee buckled under the weight of my waterlogged clothes, but I dragged Khloe by the wrist while she held Nathan tucked securely inside her coat against her bare chest, using her own body heat to keep the infant alive. Isabella stumbled behind us, panting heavily, clutching her bruised ribs.
The Defender sat idling beneath a canopy of hemlock trees, its exhaust puffing white clouds into the biting air.
I threw the back door open, shoved Khloe and Isabella inside, and scrambled into the driver’s seat. I slammed the lock button down just as the first distant flash of blue and red emergency lights reflected off the tree trunks at the top of the lake road.
I didn't turn on the headlights. I slammed the shifter into reverse, spun the heavy four-wheel-drive vehicle around on the gravel lane, and accelerated deep into the unplowed logging trail heading south toward the Massachusetts border.
May you like
Behind us, the sirens reached the smoking dock.
Ahead of us lay an ocean, a dead woman who was very much alive, and seven hours to intercept a flight that was already halfway across the world.
