Chapter 11 - The Echo on the Water
Lauren wiped her face, stepping up beside Vance at the window.
Through the salt-encrusted glass, the bay was no longer dark.
A massive, twin-engine military helicopter—completely matte black, devoid of any federal insignias or registration numbers—was hovering thirty feet above the water at the mouth of the slip. Its downdraft churned the freezing sea into a maelstrom of white spray, tearing the rotting boards off the adjacent piers.
Pinned in the glare of the aircraft’s thirty-million-candlepower searchlight was the harbor patrol launch Vance had planned to use for their escape.
It was already sinking, its fiberglass hull splintered and smoking from a heavy-caliber burst.
On the dock outside the bait shack, three black zodiac boats bumped against the pilings. A dozen men in full maritime tactical gear stepped onto the wood, their assault rifles raised, forming a lethal, unbroken semicircle around the shack.
There was no way out. The water was behind them, the swamp was to the left, and twelve heavily armed operators held the only land approach.
Then, the helicopter’s external PA system crackled to life.
The sound wasn’t the booming, robotic demand of a federal commander. It was a woman’s voice—cool, measured, aristocratic, and horrifyingly familiar.
*“Lauren, dear,”* the voice echoed over the roar of the rotor blades, vibrating the wooden walls of the shack. *“You really shouldn’t have kept those yellow gloves. I told you four years ago in Richmond... sentimentality is an incurable disease.”*
Lauren’s heart stopped.
She knew that voice. It was Dr. Eleanor Vance.
Thomas Vance’s estranged sister—and the chief executive officer of Vanguard Therapeutics, who was supposed to have perished in the laboratory fire four years ago.
Captain Vance turned slowly toward Lauren in the darkness of the shack, his gun hand trembling as he stared at the window, the color completely gone from his eyes.
“Thomas,” the voice boomed again from the sky, closer now, as the heavy boots of the tactical team reached the bait shack door. *“Tell your nurse to open the latch. Or I’ll have my men drop the roof on top of you both.”*
Lauren looked down at Eli, who was clutching Josie’s finger in his tiny, fever-warm hand.
May you like
Then came the sound of a mechanical breach charge being clamped to the exterior door of the shack.
*Three... two...*
