Chapter 9 - The Boathouse Bargain)
Ruiz wanted a tactical team. Claire refused. Any visible police movement could get Ethan killed, and the ledger page was their only proof that Anna’s child had survived.
They compromised. Claire wore a wire disguised as the clasp of her wedding necklace. Ruiz’s officers stayed beyond the estate boundary.
The old boathouse leaned over a black lake behind the property. Claire entered at midnight carrying the ledger page in a plastic folder.
Ethan sat tied beneath a hanging lamp. Margaret stood behind him with a pistol. Dr. Vale waited near the door, his face hollow.
“Where is Anna?” Margaret asked.
“Safe.”
“No one is safe after betraying family.”
Claire demanded the locket. Margaret offered a trade: the page and Claire’s silence in exchange for Ethan and enough money to disappear. Claire asked why Margaret had slept beside her grown son.
For the first time, Margaret looked embarrassed.
“Because the injection causes convulsions. He could have choked. I was protecting him.”
“After poisoning him.”
“After preserving what remained of this family.”
Margaret confessed that Charles began the illegal research. When he tried to expose it, the families who financed him threatened Ethan and every child born through the program. Margaret killed Charles to prevent the scandal and took control of the network herself.
The admission traveled through Claire’s wire.
Then Margaret smiled. “Your necklace is transmitting.”
Vale ripped it from Claire’s throat and crushed it.
Margaret had placed a signal detector in the boathouse. She ordered Vale to inject Claire. Instead, he turned the syringe on Margaret.
The pistol fired.
Vale fell into the lake through the open side door. Ethan threw himself backward, knocking Margaret off balance. Claire seized the locket and ran.
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Outside, flames climbed the boathouse wall. Margaret had soaked the floor with fuel before Claire arrived.
Ethan was still tied inside.
