Chapter 12 - The Shot
The shot hit the wall where Adrian had been standing.
Michael tackled him a half second earlier.
Security returned fire toward the darkness outside.
My mother screamed.
Cassandra dragged me behind the kitchen island.
“Stay down.”
The baby kicked violently.
I curled around my stomach.
Adrian crawled toward me.
“You hit?”
“No.”
“You?”
“No.”
Michael was bleeding from his arm.
Not a gunshot.
Glass.
Security sealed the house.
The shooter disappeared into the tree line.
Ten minutes later, Victor arrived by helicopter.
He came through the back door like a storm.
Then he saw Michael.
Everything in him stopped.
“You’re alive.”
Michael stared at him.
“You knew Charles found me.”
Victor’s face changed.
“I suspected.”
“You left me there.”
“No.”
Michael stepped closer.
“You knew I survived.”
“I learned two years after the crash. By then Charles had moved you through three private facilities.”
“And you did nothing?”
“I tried.”
Michael laughed bitterly.
“You always say that.”
Adrian looked at his father.
“You knew my wife’s brother was alive?”
Victor did not look at him.
“I knew there was a possibility.”
I wanted to hit him too.
Instead I said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because every person who got close to Michael became a target.”
“My mother was just tied in a closet.”
Victor flinched.
Good.
He deserved to.
Michael pointed to the archive.
“That card can destroy Charles.”
Victor nodded.
“And half the people who paid him.”
Michael looked at her.
“What?”
“Fake psychiatric reports.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“No.”
He opened a file hidden inside the archive.
Before I met Adrian.
I stared at them.
It showed me leaving the hospital where I worked as a freelance communications consultant.
Adrian whispered, “They picked you.”
He looked at me.
Our first meeting had been at a charity event.
Or so we had always believed.
My editor’s illness had been induced by food poisoning.
“Our entire marriage…”
He looked at me.
“They arranged a room.”
His eyes closed.
LIVE FEED.
Charles Vale was sitting in a dark room.
“Hello, Victor.”
Then he turned slightly.
Behind him, tied to a chair, was the lead investigator from Meridian Genomics.
May you like
Charles smiled wider.
“Bring me Michael’s archive by midnight, or I start deleting people instead of files.”
