Chapter 71 - The Vault Under the Rhone River
Three hours later.
The private medical suite inside an unmarked safehouse on the outskirts of Geneva was dead silent, save for the rhythmic, synchronized beep of two neonatal heart monitors.
Grace lay on the left warmer, her pink cheeks flushed with warmth, soundly asleep.
On the right warmer lay her brother.
The pediatrician we had hired through our encrypted intelligence contact had just finished administering a concentrated dose of surfactant and warm oxygen. The baby’s skin had shifted from the ghastly cyanotic blue of the bridge to a soft, healthy rose.
Khloe stood between the two warmers, her hands resting gently on both incubators. Her body was trembling with exhaustion, her knuckles bruised and scabbed, her clothes stained with soot, snow, and Anthony’s blood.
"What are we naming him?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper, not daring to take her eyes off his tiny chest rising and falling.
"Leo," I said, stepping behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist, resting my chin against her bruised shoulder. "Leo Vance Miller. So he never forgets that he survived a war."
Khloe leaned her head back against my chest, closing her eyes as tears finally broke through the stone facade she had maintained for forty-eight hours. "Is it over, Mark? Please tell me it's over."
Before I could answer, the secure laptop on the desk across the room pinged.
A red notification pulsed on the encrypted screen. The facial recognition algorithm I had set to monitor private Alpine emergency room check-ins had caught a match.
It wasn't Catherine.
The camera feed from an underground private clinic near the Place de la Fusterie in downtown Geneva showed a woman in a dark trench coat, sunglasses hiding her eyes, limping into the private banking depository entrance beneath the Rhone River.
The woman pulled down her scarf to clear the biometric scanner.
The screen flashed green: *ISABELLA WARD — ACCESS GRANTED.*
Khloe’s breath hitched in her throat. She stepped back from the warmers, her eyes narrowing into cold flint.
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"She’s in Geneva," Khloe said, her voice dropping into a deadly, flat register. "She wasn't in Boston. She wasn't running. She was waiting for Anthony and Catherine to kill each other."
***
