Chapter 35 - The Cloistered Heir
The driver slammed on the brakes, the cab skidding sideways across the black ice before coming to a halt against a snowbank. He began cursing frantically in Swiss-German, his hands flying over the emergency flashers.
I didn't wait.
"Maisie, out! Right now!"
I grabbed our duffel bag, threw open the door, and hauled Maisie out into the knee-deep snow just as a black SUV with tinted windows came roaring down the hill from the institute’s gates, moving at suicidal speed. It clipped the rear bumper of the cab with a violent metallic crunch, spinning the taxi entirely across the road, but the SUV didn't stop—it accelerated down the mountain, its tires throwing up twin roostertails of gray slush.
They weren't coming for us. They were running.
"Mommy!" Maisie cried out, slipping in the deep powder.
I pulled her upright, lifting her into my arms and plunging off the asphalt into the tree line that flanked the institute’s perimeter wall. The pine branches were heavy with snow, dumping frigid sheets over our heads as we fought our way up the steep incline toward a pedestrian side gate.
The side gate was hanging open, its electronic magnetic lock smoking, blown clean off its mountings with a thermite charge.
Inside the grounds, the air was thick with the stench of burned plastic and magnesium. The courtyard was empty, but the front doors of the stone dormitory had been kicked inward, the heavy oak timbers splintered. Alarms were wailing from the main hall—a shrill, mechanical shriek that seemed to bounce uselessly off the frozen mountainside.
"Stay behind me," I whispered to Maisie, drawing the pistol and cocking the hammer with my thumb.
We moved through the arched entrance into the foyer. The hall was adorned with Renaissance paintings and marble busts of forgotten Swiss benefactors, but the marble floor was slick with tracking footprints of melting snow and combat boot grease.
Near the central staircase, an older man in an administrator’s tweed suit lay slumped against a mahogany desk, clutching a shattered shoulder, his breath coming in wheezing, bloody gasps.
"Where is the boy?" I demanded, crouching beside him, keeping my weapon low but ready. "Nicholas Vance. Where is he?"
The administrator looked at me through eyes clouded with shock. He saw Maisie standing behind me, her small face pale, her hood dusted with snow. His gaze dropped to Maisie's neck, then back to my face.
"The chapel..." the man wheezed, blood flecking his lower lip. "Father... Father Thomas took him... to the crypt. But the men... they had the override codes... Eleanor’s codes..."
"How many?"
"Four," he whispered. "They don't... they don't want to kill him. They brought... the containment harness. They know the date."
*Maisie’s tenth birthday.*
It was less than forty-eight hours away.
I didn't offer the man comfort. In the world Eleanor Vance had engineered, pity was a luxury that left you dead in an alleyway. I took Maisie by the wrist and ran toward the cloister that led to the institute’s medieval chapel.
The chapel was freezing, its stained glass windows filtering the gray winter twilight into bruised shades of violet and crimson. The air smelled of old frankincense and cold limestone.
At the foot of the altar, the floor was open. A heavy stone slab had been raised on pneumatic jacks, revealing a spiral staircase carved into the bedrock below.
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From the depths of the crypt came the sound of a scuffle—a child’s muffled cry, followed by the dull, sickening thud of a rifle butt striking bone.
***
