Chapter 19 - The Second Bracelet
“Dad!” Leo scrambled out into the wet air, his small face streaked with tears and grease, tumbling directly into Daniel’s arms.
Daniel dropped to his knees on the freezing tarmac, pulling the boy tightly against his chest, burying his face in Leo’s hair as his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. “I have you. I have you, buddy. You’re safe.”
“Dad, the hangar…” Leo pointed a shaking finger over Daniel’s shoulder. “I saw them carrying another crate out through the rear maintenance tunnel! Before the shooting started!”
Daniel stiffened, his head snapping toward the rear of Hangar Four.
Marcus ran up, breathing heavily, ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a fresh one home. “Sir, we eliminated the outer squad, but the cargo crate—they had a subterranean lift! They didn't come to kill Leo, Mr. Sterling. The attack was a smoke screen to extract the twin!”
Daniel stood up, his arm still locked around Leo’s shoulders. He looked back into the hangar.
The hydraulic lift where the carbon-fiber medical case had rested was empty. Only Evelyn lay groaning on the floor, clutching her bleeding leg amid the sea of spent brass shells and shattered glass. A square access hatch in the concrete floor beneath the lift stood wide open, revealing an underground utility tunnel leading toward the abandoned naval shipyard adjacent to the airport.
Daniel walked into the hangar, Leo clinging to his side. He knelt beside Evelyn, who was trembling violently from blood loss and shock.
“Who took him?” Daniel demanded, his voice chillingly calm.
Evelyn looked up at him, her lips blue from cold. “It wasn't Victor. Victor was just the dog on the leash, Daniel. Victor didn't have the resources to run a black-ops extraction like this.”
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“Then who?”
“The matriarch,” Evelyn whispered, coughing weakly. “Your mother. Eleanor Sterling. She never left Zurich, Daniel. She never approved of Claire, and she never trusted you to keep the Sterling board under control. She funded Victor from day one.”
