Chapter 6 - The Broken Alibi
The shockwave knocked me off my feet, the concussive pressure slamming the breath out of my lungs.
Through the searing white spots in my vision and the high-pitched ringing in my ears, I saw Vanessa stagger backward, disoriented, the hypodermic needle flying from her grip and shattering against the tile floor.
I didn't think. I didn't wait for SWAT.
I launched myself across the linoleum, tackling Vanessa by the waist and driving her into the steel supply cabinet behind her. Glass vials shattered in a cascade of chemical rain. I pinned her against the wall, my hands clamped around her throat, my thumb pressing deep into the soft hollow behind her jaw.
“WHERE ARE THE OTHER GIRLS?!” I screamed into her face. “WHERE ARE SOPHIA AND CHLOE?!”
She clawed at my face, her manicured nails digging into my cheek, but she was gasping for air, her eyes bulging. “You... you can’t... stop it... the Architect... already has them...”
A SWAT operator ripped me off her, hauling me back as Ramirez drove her knee into Vanessa’s spine, slamming her face into the floor and cuffing her wrists with brutal force.
“I have the suspect secured!” Ramirez yelled over the ringing.
I lunged back to the chair. Miller was already slicing through the velvet restraints with a tactical knife.
The moment Emma’s hands were free, she threw her arms around my neck, burying her face into the hollow of my throat, clinging to me with a strength no four-year-old should ever possess.
“Daddy, you found me!” she wailed, her whole body shaking violently. “You found me, you found me!”
“I’m here, baby,” I choked out, tears pouring down my face as I crushed her against my Kevlar vest, rocking her back and forth amidst the shattered glass and spent shell casings. “Daddy’s here. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again. Nobody.”
“Daniel!” Miller called out from the corner of the room. He was standing over an open laptop console connected to the warehouse’s central server. “You need to see this. Right now.”
I carried Emma, keeping her face buried in my shoulder so she wouldn't see the blood on the floor or Vanessa being dragged away in chains.
On the screen was an encrypted video call that had been running during the entire operation. The call had just disconnected, but the display showed an active IP routing log.
The client on the other end of the feed wasn't in Geneva.
The client was accessing the surveillance stream from an IP address registered to an estate less than five miles from my own house: *The Blackwood Manor.*
And the name on the account wasn't Eleanor Vance.
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It was **Arthur Sterling**—Claire’s biological father, the man who had supposedly died thirty years ago.
***
