Chapter 16 - The Serpent’s Wake
Nathan awoke to the taste of copper and the agonizing sting of an adrenaline autoinjector plunging directly through his chest plate into his heart.
He gasped violently, sitting bolt upright. Kane was leaning over him, bloody-faced and coughing, holding an empty medical syringe.
"Breathe, Nathan! Breathe!" Kane wheezed. "The ventilation system... I blew the emergency intake hatch with a breaching charge. We’ve been out for forty minutes."
Nathan scrambled to his feet, ignoring the searing pain behind his eyes. The facility around them was completely dark now, the red backup lights painting the concrete walls in bloody hues. "The feed... Leo... where were they taking him?"
Kane pulled his cracked tactical device from his harness. "The signal Sterling used was routed through a private cellular tower on the Canadian border. A private airstrip outside Kalispell, Montana. They aren't taking him across the country—they were in Montana the entire time!"
"The estate," Nathan realized, his voice trembling with terrifying clarity. "She never left the area. The creaking floorboards, the monitor... she wasn't just haunting the house, she was surveying it. She knew our patrol rotations. She knew the moment we stepped on that jet to Boston."
"We have three hours before a private transport can clear Canadian airspace," Kane said, his jaw locked with determination. "I’m calling in federal air interdiction. We’ll scramble F-16s if we have to."
"No!" Nathan grabbed Kane’s tactical vest. "The moment she sees military aircraft, she’ll kill him! You heard Sterling—she needs Leo alive for the synthesis, but only until the procedure is finished. If she feels cornered, she’ll inject him with that poison just to spite us!"
"Then what’s the play, Nathan? We’re halfway across the country!"
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Nathan reached down and pulled the brass key from his neck chain—the key to the private hangar his father had kept at the decommissioned coastal naval base five miles from Harbor Cove. "My family didn't just build pharmaceutical companies, Marcus. My father built high-altitude reconnaissance prototypes for DARPA. There’s a twin-turbine jet in that hangar that can cross the continent in under ninety minutes. We are going to hunt her down ourselves."
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