Chapter 64 - The Shadow of Montreal
I stumbled back a step, the gravel crunching underfoot, my vision tunneling as the cold wind whipped around me. Arthur had smiled at Lily when she was six months old. He had bounced her on his knee in the mahogany library in Greenwich while I poured tea, pretending to be the benevolent grandfather who had finally forgiven his wayward daughter.
It had all been collateral.
Campbell was out of the truck before I could scream, his service weapon drawn but kept low against his thigh, his eyes scanning the tree line beyond the railroad tracks. "Emma! We’ve got company! Two black Suburbans just cleared the toll plaza onto Interstate 787!"
Eleanor scrambled out of the car, her knees buckling in the slush, clutching at my legs like a beggar. "Listen to me! We have to get to the vault in Troy! The hard copies are in the subterranean depository under the old foundry! If we burn the original promissory note, the Canadian debt cannot attach to Lily! Please, Emma... I have the master keycard in my coat! You can't let them take her!"
"Why should I believe you?" I shouted over the rising wind. "You called her a burden! You told a six-year-old girl she ruined Christmas!"
"Because she was supposed to be the end of it!" Eleanor shrieked, tears freezing on her cheeks. "I didn't want her involved! I tried to push you away so Arthur couldn't use her! If you left, if you stayed angry and never came back, he couldn't finalize the indemnity! But Arthur forced me to call you back for New Year’s! Don't you see? My cruelty was the only wall I had left!"
It was the most monstrous, twisted lie—or the most hideous truth—I had ever heard in my life. And looking into her hollow, terrified eyes, I couldn't tell where the monster ended and the mother began.
"Get in the truck," I said coldly.
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"Emma, no," Campbell barked, backing toward us, his gaze fixed on the highway overpass where two pairs of high-beam headlights cut through the swirling snow. "We don't take her. She’s radioactive."
"She has the keycard to the foundry," I said, grabbing Eleanor by the collar of her ruined coat and hauling her toward the truck. "And until I burn that paper with my daughter’s name on it, none of us are ever going home."
