Chapter 13 - The Living Room Standoff
The front door of my house was unlocked.
I walked through the foyer carrying Toby, wrapped tightly in a wool emergency blanket. His skin felt like dry parchment, his pulse a faint, irregular flutter against my neck.
Elena was still sitting on the sofa, an iPad resting on her knees, watching a live financial ticker displaying the Apex Bio-Dynamics stock index.
Standing on either side of the fireplace were two men in dark suits, both armed with suppressed submachine guns hanging from single-point slings.
"Put him on the coffee table," Elena commanded without looking up from the screen.
"Disarm the gas main first," I said, remaining in the archway of the dining room.
"You don't have leverage, Mark," she said, finally raising her eyes. "He has about six minutes before the cellular transformation causes irreversible neuro-vascular collapse. Put him down, and my medical team will extract the draw and administer the stabilizer."
"You don't have a medical team," I said, stepping into the light of the chandelier.
Elena’s eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
"The men at the St. Jude facility," I said, my voice dropping to a low, steady growl. "They’re in zip-ties in the back of Cross’s tactical wagon. And your impersonator at the quarry? She didn't make it to the ambulance."
Elena didn't flinch. She just gave a soft, pitying sigh. "Did you really think they were my team, Mark? Those were the clean-up contractors your mother hired to erase my existence three days ago. They worked for Evelyn, not me."
From the top of the stairs, the sound of slow, heavy footsteps echoed down the wooden treads.
A tall man in an immaculate charcoal suit descended, holding a glass of iced bourbon in one hand and a suppressed pistol in the other.
His silver hair was combed back, his jawline identical to mine.
It was my father.
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The man who had supposedly died of a heart attack in a Chicago hotel room when I was twelve years old.
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