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“Where do you think the helicopters went?” I asked, finding the silence bone-chillingly eerie. I tried hard not to squeeze Amsel so firmly to my chest.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t gotten around to satellite monitoring of our airspace.”
“Jesus Christ.” Even his sarcasm couldn’t lessen the terror gripping me. I handed the baby to Rosa before I suffocated him, and then searched one of the hallway tables for a suitable weapon, settling on a silver letter opener with a sharp tip.
More gunshots made me jump.
Kyle said, “Laundry room is secure.” He kept scrolling. “I don’t see anyone else invading us. Just—oh, shit!”
More of the sharp, ear-piercing popping and then Kyle erupted again with the profanity. Dane crept back into the hallway, checking rooms as he made his way toward us.
Kyle called out, “Price and Amano are down. There are four—four!—in the kitchen, moving … Goddamn it!”
His head whipped around. Our gazes followed. Ethan and three others rounded the corner from the kitchen, guns drawn.
Dane raised his arm, taking aim at Ethan.
“Dane, no!” I screamed.
Ethan carried one of those rifles with the scopes on top I’d hoped to never see again in my lifetime. And the infrared dot sett
led on the baby’s forehead.
My heart launched into my throat.
“Not Amsel,” I said to Ethan as hot tears rolled down my cheeks. “Not our son.”
chapter 19
“Don’t even fucking think about pulling that trigger, Ethan.” Dane’s tone was deathly serious.
“What choice do I have?” Ethan demanded. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, Dane. I had everything under control once I got my hands on that hard drive. I destroyed all the evidence against me. I was in the clear. But you had to go to Philadelphia, didn’t you?”
Shock reverberated through me. How the hell did he know? We’d just gotten back!
With a challenging look, Dane asked, “You know what I found there?”
“You never had a need to delve into your father’s records or files. If you just would have left it be, if you just would have let it all lie—”
“How the fuck was I supposed to do that?” Dane bellowed. “I saw the photo of you with my father. Of course I was going to start piecing this all together.”
“That’s always been your problem,” Ethan said irritably. “You can’t overlook anything. You can’t just turn a blind eye.”
“To everything the society did to ruin lives while making a profit? I was supposed to pretend that wasn’t happening?”
“You’re just like your father.”
My eyes squeezed shut. So we’d been right all along. Bradley had taken the same stance with the society as Dane had, only thirty years before him.
When I opened my eyes, Dane still had his gun trained on Ethan. The red dot still flashed against Amsel’s forehead. My insides were still a mangled mess.
Amano and Agent Price had been shot and were either dead or bleeding to death in our kitchen. And we were all at an impasse.
“What good will any of this do?” I somehow managed to ask Ethan.
“Well, Mrs. Bax, I could have easily brought down your private jet on your return flight from Pennsylvania. Leaving your son to suffer the same fate as Dane did right around the same age. I could have let history repeat itself.”
I felt an insidious ripple along my spine.
