CHAPTER 4 — THE WOMAN WHO DIED
Daniel could not speak.
Rebecca sat across from him inside the moving transport van.
Her dark hair had turned mostly gray.
A scar ran from her temple to her jaw.
Her wrists were thin beneath the steel cuffs.
But her eyes were the same.
The eyes Daniel had seen across a military briefing room twenty-eight years earlier.
The eyes he had watched close inside a coffin.
“This isn’t real,” he whispered.
Rebecca leaned forward.
“It’s real.”
“I buried you.”
“You buried someone.”
Daniel stared at her.
The van turned sharply.
Rebecca braced herself against the wall.
“After the crash, the Whitmores controlled the hospital, the coroner, and the investigation. The body was burned beyond recognition.”
“I identified your wedding ring.”
“They put it on another woman.”
Daniel felt sick.
For sixteen years, he had visited a grave containing a stranger.
“You let me believe you were dead.”
“I was captured.”
“For sixteen years?”
“Not all of them.”
“What does that mean?”
Rebecca looked toward the camera above the rear door.
“We don’t have much time.”
Daniel followed her gaze.
The camera light was blinking.
“They’re watching us.”
“They want us to talk.”
“Then tell me what they already know.”
Rebecca’s eyes filled with pain.
“Emily was never supposed to meet Charles.”
“She didn’t meet him. He hunted her.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“The Whitmores do not inherit their power through normal trusts. Their fortune is protected by an old family covenant.”
Daniel gave a bitter laugh.
“A covenant?”
“A legal structure created after the Second World War. The controlling assets can only pass through the eldest surviving daughter of the direct bloodline.”
“Emily.”
“Yes.”
“Charles married his cousin?”
“Not by blood.”
Daniel frowned.
Rebecca lowered her voice.
“Charles is not Vivian’s biological son.”
The van hit another turn.
“Then whose son is he?”
Rebecca looked directly at Daniel.
Before she could answer, the transport vehicle slammed to a stop.
Gunfire erupted outside.
Three shots.
Then five.
The driver screamed.
The van tilted toward one side.
Daniel’s shoulder struck the steel wall.
Smoke poured through the ventilation system.
Rebecca coughed.
“Daniel, listen to me.”
The rear doors shook beneath an impact.
Someone was trying to force them open.
“If we’re separated again, find Anna Whitmore.”
“Anna?”
“My older sister.”
“I thought Vivian was your only sister.”
“That is what the family told the world.”
The doors tore open.
A masked man reached inside.
Daniel drove both feet into his chest.
The attacker fell backward.
Daniel seized the edge of the door and pulled himself outside, still cuffed.
The van had crashed near an abandoned shipyard.
Two black vehicles blocked the road.
Armed men moved between rusted containers.
Daniel turned back toward Rebecca.
“Stay behind me.”
She almost smiled.
“You still say that.”
A bullet struck the van beside his head.
Daniel tackled Rebecca behind a concrete barrier.
One of the attackers approached from the left.
Rebecca caught the man’s wrist, twisted the weapon away, and struck him across the throat.
Sixteen years had not erased her training either.
Daniel took the rifle.
They moved together without speaking.
Like the old days.
Like death had never separated them.
They reached the edge of the shipyard.
A dark sedan waited beside the water.
Colonel Evelyn Shaw stood behind the wheel.
“Get in!”
Daniel pulled open the rear door.
Rebecca stopped.
She stared at Evelyn.
“You.”
Evelyn’s face went pale.
“Rebecca?”
“You left me there.”
“I thought you were dead.”
Rebecca raised the stolen rifle.
“You knew exactly where I was.”
Daniel stepped between them.
“This is not the time.”
Rebecca’s hands trembled.
“She sold the mission to Vivian.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“That’s not true.”
“You gave them the extraction route.”
“I was ordered to.”
“By whom?”
Evelyn looked at Daniel.
Then at Rebecca.
“The order came from Cross Seven command.”
Daniel felt the answer before she spoke it.
The old program had never been controlled by the government.
It had been controlled by the Whitmores.
More vehicles appeared at the far end of the shipyard.
Evelyn opened the door.
“Get inside or none of us leave.”
Daniel pushed Rebecca into the car and climbed in after her.
The sedan accelerated toward the waterfront.
Behind them, armed men opened fire.
Evelyn drove through a chain-link gate and onto a narrow service road.
“Where is Emily?” Rebecca demanded.
“Beneath the Newport estate.”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
“The room.”
“You know it?”
“I spent seven months there.”
Daniel turned toward her.
May you like
Rebecca looked at him.
“Our daughter was conceived in that room.”
