Chapter 128 - The Sovereign Ground
The impact threw them forward into a snowbank.
The airboat’s aluminum hull crumpled like an aluminum can, the engine hissing and dying as steam billowed into the freezing night air. Emma scrambled up on her elbows, spitting snow, her hands instantly searching the drifts.
"Maya! Maya!"
"I'm here, Mommy!"
A small hand reached out from beneath a torn piece of canvas. Emma pulled her daughter free, checking every inch of her limbs. Aside from being dusted in powdery snow and shivering violently, Maya was unharmed.
Sterling hauled Claire out of the wreckage. Claire’s face was pale, her lips purple from blood loss and hypothermia, but she was still conscious.
"Jean is unconscious, but breathing," Sterling reported, checking the pilot’s pulse in the crumpled cockpit. "The crash was bad, but we’re on the south side of the 45th parallel. We’re in Clinton County, New York."
Across the frozen bay, Vogel’s remaining zodiac had halted at the edge of the open water. The ice shelf was too thick for their boat to penetrate, and the border was an invisible tripwire they couldn't cross openly with assault weapons without triggering an international military incident.
Vogel stood in the bow of his boat, lowering his rifle. He raised a satellite phone to his ear, his face illuminated by the screen.
A moment later, Emma’s emergency burner phone in her pocket began to vibrate.
Emma pulled it out and pressed it to her ear. She didn't say a word.
"You are tenacious, Emma," Vogel’s voice came through, devoid of emotion. "You have crossed the border. But you have entered your mother’s spiderweb. The entire property around Point Au Roche was purchased by Eleanor Vance’s shell corporation thirty years ago. You are standing on her private land. By New York State law, you are trespassing on the estate of the woman you are running from."
"Tell her to come and get us herself," Emma said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "Tell Eleanor to stop sending hired mercenaries to do her dirty work. If she wants her 'burden' back, tell her to walk out onto this ice and face the daughter she spent twenty-five years destroying."
"She is already on her way, Mrs. Vance," Vogel replied softly. "Look behind you."
Emma turned around.
May you like
Rising through the pine trees on the bluff above the shore stood a massive, dark silhouette—the stone chimneys of the Vance Estate’s forgotten summer hunting lodge.
And winding down the private driveway through the blizzard, a convoy of four black limousines was slowly descending toward the boathouse, their headlights cutting through the falling snow like the eyes of hungry wolves.
