Page 96 of When the Silence Breaks

Tessa looked away.

Sarah steadied her breath. “I hear you, baby. Don’t cry, Mama’s coming. I’ll be there soon. You don’t need to cry.” The phone disconnected.

Malcolm’s smile was back. “You have your proof. Now the vial.”

“Where’s the rest of your team?” Ryder asked. “You going to storm the site after this, leave us for dead like you did Aaron?”

Malcolm didn’t answer. Yeah. That’s what he thought. They were as good as dead.

Ryder looked to Sarah. She knew it too. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

She unzipped the pack Ryder still wore and retrieved the vial from it. She held it up—and stepped back from them. “It’s glass. It’ll break if I drop it. You get the vial once my son is in my arms and we’re somewhere safe.”

She wasn’t offering, she was threatening.

“You come at me now, and I’ll break it. None of us leaves. You come at us later,” she said, “and this goes where no one will ever find it.”

“What do you intend to do with it, Sarah? If you plan to give it to the authorities—those who know how to deal with it, who know the history—then here we are. Hand it over.”

Not a chance. This wasn’t a sanctioned operation. And if it was, Ryder had some issues with it because this was the dirtiest group of people he had ever met.

Tessa paled.

Malcolm didn’t move.

And Ryder knew—the next move was going to shatter someone. Maybe everyone. Sarah was at her breaking point, and that didn’t bode well for that vial in her hand.

Thirty-Nine

What amI doing?What amI doing?

Darkness would be closing in soon, and she shivered partly from the cold, but mostly with fear for her life while that warm ranger cabin called to her—but she’d known that death waited for her there. She wasn’t so sure that death didn’t wait for her here.

Maybe she’d acted rashly, but she knew to her core that Malcolm wouldn’t let them live. She was a desperate woman, and she had to maximize this moment. Her gloved fingers gripped the vial.

She didn’t step forward to offer it over but instead took a step back and away.

The weight of Jeremy’s voice still echoed in her ears—“Mama?”—fragile and confused. Crying. Alone. And she was standing here in the snow, surrounded by traitors, holding the one thing they wanted more than her son’s life. Anger fueled her.

Desperation and absolute rage.

Malcolm spoke. His mouth was moving, but she didn’t hear the words. He said something about protocol. Responsibility.History. But all she could hear over that noise was her son’s voice calling out to her.

And her mind screamed ...These animals. These monsters!

All she could see was the woman standing next to Malcolm.

Her brother’s widow—Tessa.

The woman who’d sung lullabies to Jeremy when Sarah was too exhausted to keep her eyes open. The woman who’d smiled at Aaron across the table during Sunday dinners. The woman who’d laced her betrayal into the seams of their lives so carefully no one noticed—until it was too late.

Sarah’s blood roared as she tightened her grip on the vial of death. She raised it up, arm steady. It felt like no one had heard her and no one believed her.

“This glass will shatter the second it hits a rock,” she said, her voice low, controlled. “If I drop it, no one gets anything. Not your sample. Not your research. Not your power. In fact, you could all die.”

Malcolm raised both hands a fraction. “Don’t be foolish.”

“Oh, I’ve been foolish,” she said. “Letting her in my house. Trusting her with my son. But not today.”