CHAPTER 30 — THE WOMAN WHO KNEW KATHERINE
Emergency generators activated.
The digital locks released.
Rosa led the residents toward the secured courtyard while agents entered the underground corridors.
The black sedans outside the estate had vanished.
So had Adrian and Julian.
Gabriel survived, but doctors found something inside his reopened wound.
A second data capsule.
It had not been there during the earlier surgery.
Someone had placed it inside him while he was in the mansion.
The capsule contained only nine seconds of audio.
Katherine’s voice said:
“Victor is not Subject Nine. Subject Nine is the person he has protected without knowing why.”
Then a child whispered:
“Evelyn.”
Victor refused to leave the foundation.
“You think it is you?” he asked her.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“The Registry listed you as a succession candidate.”
“So did Gabriel.”
“But Adrian spent years trying to control you. Perhaps he was ordered to.”
Evelyn looked through the glass toward the sleeping residents.
“Adrian never needed orders to be cruel.”
Before dawn, investigators found Michael Crane unconscious in his holding cell.
Someone had entered without appearing on surveillance.
A symbol had been drawn on the wall.
Nine lines surrounded an open door.
Crane eventually regained consciousness.
He remembered nothing after his arrest.
But beneath his fingernails, investigators found fresh white paint.
The same paint used on the walls of the foundation’s counseling center.
Rosa searched the center.
Behind one recently repaired wall, she discovered another narrow compartment.
Inside were dozens of letters written by Katherine.
Most had never been sent.
One was addressed to Evelyn.
My darling,
If you are reading this, someone has already told you that you were chosen.
They will make selection sound like power.
It is not.
It is ownership.
Do not believe anyone who says your blood gives you the right to control others.
Do not trust the man wearing your father’s grief.
Do not trust the boy carrying your memories.
And when the woman with my face returns, do not let her inside.
Evelyn stopped reading.
Rosa stood beside her.
“The woman with her face?”
A guard called from the gate.
A lone visitor had arrived.
She was an older woman with silver hair.
She wore no coat despite the cold morning.
No car waited behind her.
In one hand, she carried an old leather medical bag.
In the other, she held a photograph of Evelyn and Julian playing in the garden as children.
Evelyn walked to the gate but did not open it.
The woman raised her face toward the camera.
She had Katherine’s eyes.
Katherine’s mouth.
Even the small scar near her chin.
Victor arrived behind Evelyn.
When he saw the woman, all color left his face.
“No,” he whispered.
The woman looked directly at him.
“Hello, Victor.”
Evelyn’s hand remained on the gate control.
“Who are you?”
The woman’s expression softened.
“I am the person who taught Katherine how to disappear.”
Victor gripped the stone wall.
“You died before Evelyn was born.”
“That was the agreement.”
The woman held the childhood photograph against the gate.
“Julian has Adrian. The Ninth Covenant has the final pages of the Registry. And one person inside this foundation has been working with them since the beginning.”
“Who?”
The woman looked toward the glowing mansion.
“I will tell you.”
She stepped closer.
“But first you must decide whether Katherine’s final warning was meant to protect you…”
Her eyes returned to Evelyn.
“…or to protect the Covenant from me.”
Behind Evelyn, one of the mansion’s upper windows opened.
A shadow moved behind the curtain.
Then the foundation’s alarm began ringing.
The woman outside the gate smiled faintly.
“They know I’m here.”
Evelyn looked at the gate control beneath her hand.
Opening it might reveal the truth.
It might also invite the most dangerous person Katherine had ever known into a house filled with vulnerable women and children.
Victor stepped backward.
“Do not let her inside.”
The woman’s smile disappeared.
“Ask him why, Evelyn.”
A gunshot sounded from somewhere inside the mansion.
Rosa’s voice came through the radio.
“Evelyn, someone opened Katherine’s hidden room.”
The woman outside raised both hands.
“You have less than one minute.”
“To do what?”
“To choose which side of the door you are standing on.”
Evelyn looked toward the mansion.
Then toward the woman wearing her mother’s face.
Her finger moved over the gate control.
May you like
But before she could press it, the screen went dark.
And the iron gate began opening by itself.
