## CHAPTER 13 — THE WOMAN ON THE SCREEN
For one terrible second, I believed Celeste was working with them.
Then I saw her hands.
They were tied behind her back.
The knife was not in her grip.
A man standing just outside the camera frame held it against Claire’s throat, using Celeste’s body to hide himself.
Nora rushed toward the monitor.
“Mom!”
Claire could not hear her.
The image had no audio.
Her face was bruised, but her eyes remained open. She appeared to be inside a concrete room with no windows.
Celeste sat several feet away, also injured.
The pale-haired man in the grand hall watched my father bleed onto the marble floor.
“Four minutes,” he announced.
Marcus examined the steel door.
“No visible locking mechanism.”
“What about the computer?”
“Local control has been overridden.”
“Can you stop the feeds?”
“I’m more interested in tracing them.”
He connected another device to the terminal.
The twelve images flickered.
I moved closer to the prison feed.
Nathan sat alone at a metal table.
He was writing a letter.
He had no idea he was being watched.
Another feed showed Daniel asleep in his cell.
The intruders had access to prison cameras, hospital systems, government buildings, and Blackthorn Manor.
This was not a group of men looking for one child.
It was an organization.
“The Covenant,” I whispered.
Marcus glanced at me.
“You’ve heard the name?”
“It was one of the archive folders.”
My mother’s notebook lay open on the table.
I searched the pages for references.
Near the center, I found a paragraph written in hurried strokes.
The Covenant began as twelve families protecting wealth across generations. They traded judges, marriages, companies, medical records, and children as though all human lives were assets. Victor did not create it. Elias did not create it. They inherited it.
Below that, she had written:
I took their daughters.
I gave them names they could not track.
Claire was the first child I could not return.
Marcus read the paragraph.
“Your mother removed children from these families?”
“She rescued them.”
“Maybe. But if these people believe Nora carries something they own, they won’t stop.”
“They do not own her.”
“I know that. They may not.”
The screen displayed a countdown.
Three minutes.
Nora turned toward me.
“If I go upstairs, will they let Grandpa Elias and Mom go?”
“No.”
“But they said—”
“They lied before they entered the gate. They will lie again.”
“He called Elias my grandfather.”
“Yes.”
Nora stared at my face.
“You really are my aunt?”
“I think so.”
“You didn’t know about me.”
“No.”
“Did Grandpa know?”
On the screen, Elias looked toward the camera again.
He knew.
He had always known.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe he did.”
The answer hurt Nora more than I expected.
She looked away.
Children understood abandonment long before adults found acceptable words for it.
Marcus spoke quietly.
“I found the source of two feeds. The prison systems are being routed through a private satellite network.”
“Victor’s network?”
“Possibly. But one feed is local.”
“Which one?”
“Claire and Celeste.”
A map appeared.
The signal originated from somewhere on the Blackthorn property.
Nora looked around the underground room.
“They’re here?”
“Not in the manor,” Marcus said. “Farther west. Maybe beneath the old stables.”
The Blackthorn estate covered hundreds of acres. Parts had been abandoned for decades.
My mother could have hidden more than one facility beneath it.
The countdown reached two minutes.
“We need to get out of this room,” I said.
Marcus examined the sapphire indentation from inside.
“There must be a manual release.”
Nora returned to the yellow raincoat.
She reached into one pocket.
Her hand closed around a small brass key.
“My mother told me to check the coat.”
“You knew it would be here?”
“She said if the house opened, I should find the yellow raincoat and take what was inside.”
Marcus accepted the key and inserted it into a nearly invisible slot beneath the computer.
A metal panel opened.
Inside was a lever.
He pulled it.
The steel door released.
Before we entered the staircase, I took the black notebook, the brass key, and the drive Marcus had used to copy the archive.
“Thirty seconds,” he warned.
We climbed quickly.
The hidden wall opened into the legal center.
The intruders had moved Elias into the grand hall.
Marcus signaled for Nora and me to remain behind the display wall while he searched for another route.
I looked through the narrow gap.
The pale-haired leader stood beneath the chandelier.
My father knelt near his feet.
Three armed men guarded the doors.
Two more searched the hall.
Several foundation residents had emerged from the west wing, but staff members had locked them inside the reinforced shelter rooms.
No one else appeared to be injured.
The countdown reached zero.
The pale-haired man raised his gun.
“Last opportunity, Evelyn.”
I stepped through the hidden wall.
“Let him go.”
All five intruders turned.
Elias closed his eyes.
“Evelyn, go back.”
The leader smiled.
“Helena’s surviving daughter.”
“Which one?”
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
He knew I had seen the records.
“Where is Nora?” he asked.
“Safe.”
“Nobody inside Blackthorn is safe.”
“What do you want from her?”
“Something Helena placed in her blood.”
Nora carried a genetic key.
That explained the computer recognizing a secondary heir.
“What does it open?”
“Bring her to me and perhaps you’ll live long enough to learn.”
I walked farther into the hall.
“Your people are holding Claire beneath the western property.”
The smile disappeared.
Marcus had been right.
The local feed showed a location the leader believed we had not discovered.
I continued before he could recover.
“You came here because Claire refused to open something for you. Now you need Nora.”
“Claire made choices.”
“She escaped you.”
“She was taken from us.”
“She was a child.”
“She was an heir.”
“No child inherits ownership of other human beings.”
The leader’s jaw tightened.
Behind him, Elias subtly shifted one hand toward the inside of his coat.
The intruder guarding him noticed.
He struck my father with the gun.
Elias fell.
I moved instinctively.
The leader pointed his weapon at me.
“Where is the girl?”
A soft click sounded from the balcony.
Marcus stood above the grand hall with his weapon aimed at the leader.
“Drop it.”
The intruders spread out.
Marcus was outnumbered, but he had the advantage of height and surprise.
The leader remained calm.
“You’re Marcus Reed,” he said. “Former federal investigator. Divorced. No children. Younger brother deceased in Baltimore.”
Marcus did not react.
“You have ten seconds to drop your weapons,” he said.
The leader looked at me.
“He thinks his brother died in a robbery.”
Marcus’s eyes changed.
The leader saw it.
“So many useful lies,” he continued. “Your mother understood that better than anyone, Evelyn.”
An alarm erupted from beneath the western lawn.
Not the manor system.
An older siren.
The pale-haired man glanced toward the windows.
That second of distraction was enough.
Elias drove his shoulder into the nearest guard.
Marcus fired at the chandelier chain.
The enormous fixture dropped several feet, crashing into the floor between us.
Glass exploded across the grand hall.
Residents screamed from the sealed wing.
I threw myself behind a stone column.
Gunfire struck the wall.
Marcus descended the balcony stairs while two foundation guards entered through the kitchen corridor. They had regained communication after manually resetting the exterior system.
The intruders retreated toward the eastern doors.
Their leader grabbed my father by the collar and dragged him backward.
I reached for the fallen weapon near the chandelier.
Before I could lift it, Elias shouted.
“Let them take me!”
The leader pressed a gun beneath his jaw.
“Bring Nora to the west stables before sunrise,” he said. “Or Claire and Elias die together.”
Smoke canisters rolled across the floor.
White clouds swallowed the entrance.
By the time the air cleared, the intruders and my father were gone.
The eastern courtyard cameras returned seconds later.
No vehicles appeared on the road.
They had disappeared through another passage beneath the es
tate.
Nora emerged from behind the hidden wall.
She saw the blood on the floor.
“Where’s Grandpa?”
“They took him.”
“Because of me?”
“No.”
Her face crumpled.
I knelt in front of her.
“Listen to me. Everything they have done is because they believe fear will make us obey them. You are not responsible for their choices.”
“Can we save Mom?”
“Yes.”
It was a promise I did not know how to keep.
Marcus approached us.
Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow.
“I traced the western alarm,” he said. “Someone opened an underground emergency exit near the old chapel.”
“Claire?”
“Maybe.”
His phone vibrated.
He read the message and went still.
“What is it?”
“An alert from the federal prison.”
He turned the screen toward me.
Nathan Ashford had collapsed inside his cell.
Suspected poisoning.
Below the alert was an image taken from the prison surveillance feed.
Nathan lay on the floor.
Beside his hand, he had used spilled water to write a single word.
May you like
CELESTE.
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