Chapter 5 - The Woman on the Phone
"That is impossible," I said, my voice shaking uncontrollably.
"My mother died in a house fire when I was six years old."
Leo pointed at the digital authorization code on the screen.
"This bounty was authorized ten minutes ago using her personal biometric signature."
"Your mother faked her death, Harper."
"And she is the one actively hunting these babies."
I looked down at the twins in my arms, my entire reality fracturing into a million pieces.
If my mother was alive, and my father was a corporate warlord, my entire childhood was a fabricated lie.
Suddenly, the burner phone on Leo's desk began to ring loudly.
Leo hesitated, then hit the speaker button.
"Harper, I know you are in the maintenance room," Agent Cross said through the speaker.
"You need to get away from Leo right now."
I looked at Leo, who immediately drew a pistol from his waistband.
"Do not listen to her," Leo warned me.
"He is the one who shot Ethan Grant," Agent Cross continued smoothly.
"He is a corporate spy, and he is going to sell those babies to the highest bidder."
I backed away from Leo, clutching the twins tightly.
Leo aimed his gun at the locked steel door of the maintenance room.
"She is lying to divide us!" Leo shouted.
I didn't know who to trust anymore.
I was eleven years old, entirely alone, and trapped in a deadly game I didn't understand.
I took another step backward, feeling the cold concrete wall against my spine.
Then I noticed a small red laser dot slowly creeping across Leo's chest.
"Leo, look out!" I screamed.
The heavy steel door blew inward with a deafening explosion.
A massive cloud of concrete dust and smoke filled the tiny room.
Through the clearing smoke, a woman stepped into the bunker holding two suppressed pistols.
She raised her weapons, and her face caught the dim light of the computer screen.
May you like
I stopped breathing entirely.
She looked exactly like the photographs of my dead mother.
