Chapter 75 - The Heartbeat on the Silent Monitor
"Prussic acid," Isabella whispered, her face draining of all color as she backed away from the ceiling vents. "She’s flooding the vault. We have less than three minutes before the gas reaches lethal concentration."
"Mark, the door!" Khloe screamed, lunging toward the four-inch steel portal, slamming her fists against the impenetrable metal. "The babies are at the safehouse! They’re alone with the doctor! Mark!"
I raised the tactical pistol and fired three rounds directly into the glass observation window where Catherine stood. The bullets struck with deafening cracks, leaving white spiderweb fractures in the glass, but failed to penetrate.
Catherine didn't even flinch. She watched us with her single unbandaged eye, a cold, reptilian gaze that promised total extermination.
"Your children are not alone, Khloe," Catherine’s voice echoed through the speaker, distorted by the rushing hiss of cyanide gas filling the room. "My extraction team reached the safehouse five minutes ago."
Khloe dropped to her knees, clutching her throat as the bitter-almond fumes began to sting our eyes and burn the linings of our lungs. "No... NO!"
Catherine held up a satellite phone against the observation window.
On the screen was a live video feed from the safehouse nursery.
The Swiss pediatrician was lying motionless on the hardwood floor in a pool of blood.
Standing beside the two incubators were two men dressed in black tactical fatigues, their faces concealed by balaclavas. One of them reached down, unzipping the medical transport bag, lifting little Grace by her swaddle.
The second operative stepped toward Leo’s incubator.
"You took everything from me," Catherine whispered through the glass, her fingers trembling with sadistic pleasure as she watched Khloe choke on the toxic mist. "Now, I take the only thing you survived for."
In the vault, Isabella collapsed to the stone floor, coughing violently, blood trickling from her nostrils as the cyanide attacked her nervous system. "The... the sub-floor..." Isabella gasped, clawing at the stone flagstones beneath the mahogany table. "The old drainage tunnel... to the river... Anthony left... a crowbar..."
I coughed savagely, my chest feeling as though it were being filled with molten glass. My vision blurred into swirling halos of red and black.
I grabbed Khloe’s arm, hauling her toward the table, desperate to find the seam in the floor before our lungs dissolved in the poison air.
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Above us, on the silent video monitor pressed against the bulletproof glass, the operative at the safehouse raised a sound-suppressed pistol, centering the red laser dot directly onto the forehead of our sleeping, five-hour-old son.
And then, through the glass, Catherine Vance smiled.
