Chapter 61 - The Cry in the Freezing Fog
The darkness of the subterranean tunnel smelled of ancient mold, wet slate, and exhaust fumes. The Audi’s headlights pierced the thick subterranean fog, illuminating cracked masonry and rusted maintenance pipes that had not seen maintenance since the 1970s.
In the back seat, Grace’s crying had changed.
It was no longer the sharp, indignant wail of a startled infant. It had become a weak, shallow whimper—a ragged, choked sound that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Khloe unbuckled her seatbelt before the car had even fully emerged from the drainage canal into the secluded mountain clearing on the French side of the border. She scrambled into the back seat, pulling Grace from the car seat and holding the bundle up to the interior dome light.
"Marcus," Khloe gasped, her voice cracking with terror. "Marcus, look at her skin! Look at her!"
I slammed the brakes, bringing the Audi to a halt on the gravel shoulder of the narrow alpine road. The snow was falling heavily now, fat, silent flakes dusting the windshield.
I turned around in my seat.
Grace’s cheeks were flushed a terrifying, bright scarlet. Her tiny lips were dry, cracked, and she was panting, her small chest heaving with desperate, rapid breaths. Khloe pressed her palm against the baby's forehead and let out a strangled cry.
"She's burning up," Khloe wept, tears dripping onto the baby's blanket. "She's boiling alive, Marcus! She has a fever of at least a hundred and four! The stress... the flashbang... the cold on the dock... she's going into shock!"
I grabbed Grace's medical file from the glove compartment—the encrypted thumb drive from the Zurich clinic.
"The Vance genetic protocol," I cursed under my breath, reading the frantic translation on my phone's screen. "Her immune system isn't fully developed, but Catherine Vance had the clinic inject a proprietary cellular stimulant forty-eight hours before the extraction. If she doesn't receive the neutralizing saline within six hours of birth, her vascular system goes into hyper-inflammation!"
"Isabella knew," Khloe whispered, her eyes wide with horrified comprehension. "Isabella knew the baby would crash. That's why she brought us to Geneva—she had the antidote in her travel case!"
"Where was her case?" I demanded.
"On the pier," Khloe sobbed, rocking the feverish child against her chest. "Beside her body. Under Anthony's boots."
We were stranded on a deserted alpine pass ten miles outside of Evian-les-Bains, France. We had no local contacts, two dead cell phones, a shattered rear window, and a child dying in her mother's arms from an engineered fever.
"There's a clinic in Evian," I said, putting the car into gear and spinning the tires on the fresh snow. "A private pediatric emergency wing."
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"We can't go to a public hospital!" Khloe cried. "Anthony has Interpol alerts on our names! The moment we enter a French hospital, the Vance cartel's private security will have our coordinates in under four minutes!"
"Then they'll have our coordinates," I said coldly, flooring the accelerator into the blinding snowstorm. "Because I would rather die fighting Anthony Vance on a hospital floor than watch our daughter die in this car."
