Chapter 53 - Blood in Bermondsey
The scent of copper and burnt cordite hung thick in the narrow hallway of the Bermondsey brownstone. The door had not been kicked in; the high-security deadbolt had been melted from the inside using a silent thermite charge.
Emma rushed through the shattered threshold, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. On the floor of the living room, Miller lay motionless, staring up at the peeling wallpaper with unseeing eyes. A single, surgical shot to the chest had ended him before he could draw his sidearm.
"Clear," Daniel muttered from the kitchen, sweeping the rooms with practiced speed. "The secondary guards are down in the stairwell. Clean hits. Sub-sonic rounds, zero shell casings left behind. Vance used a private contractor—likely former Special Boat Service."
Emma dropped to her knees beside the small sofa where Lily had been sleeping only hours before. On the coffee table lay Lily’s sketchbook. A half-finished drawing of a garden with bright yellow sunflowers sat smeared with a drop of dried blood—Miller’s, not Lily’s. Tucked beneath the corner of the sketchbook was something else: a small, silver pendant of an origami swan that Emma had given Lily on her fifth birthday.
Lily had pulled it from her neck and deliberately wedged it into the wood.
"She left this," Emma whispered, clutching the tiny silver pendant to her chest, her eyes burning with unshed tears. "She knew. She was scared, but she remembered what I told her in Geneva. She left a trail."
Daniel knelt beside her, examining the base of the table. "Look at the floorboards right under where the pendant was pinned. Chalk."
Faint, white lines had been scratched onto the dark floor with a piece of artist's charcoal from Lily's set: *V - 7 - D*.
"V-Seven-D," Daniel read aloud. "Vance Marine Transport, Berth Seven, Deptford Creek. That's less than four miles from here. They aren't heading to Gravesend—they’re loading her onto a fast-interceptor craft right off the Deptford riverbank."
Emma checked the timer on her tactical sleeve. Thirty-eight minutes left on Vance’s ultimatum. On her portable screen, the recursive decryption program she had fed into Vance’s network suddenly pinged green.
*ACCESS INITIATED: TERMINAL IP LOCATED AT DEPTFORD REACH.*
May you like
"He thinks he’s breaking through the Laurent firewall," Emma said, rising to her feet, the silver swan gripped tightly in her palm. "He thinks he’s holding all the cards. Let's show Lord Vance what happens when a mother comes for her child."
***
