CHAPTER 16 — THE WOMAN BEHIND THE GLASS
“Run.”
Margaret’s warning had barely left her lips when Sarah Vane lifted two fingers.
Detective Aaron Cole reached toward the control panel beside the locked exit.
Claire pulled Lily closer.
“Do not open that door.”
Cole’s hand stopped above the keypad.
Sarah looked at him without turning her head.
“That was not a request, Aaron.”
Mason stood several steps above Claire, his gun lowered but still ready. Blood had soaked through the left side of his shirt. His face was pale, yet the fear in his eyes had nothing to do with the wound.
He was afraid of Sarah.
Lily stared through the glass.
Sarah’s expression softened.
“Come here, sweetheart.”
Lily pressed herself against Claire’s side.
“No.”
Sarah’s smile remained in place.
“You have been surrounded by people who lied to you. Your mother. Mason. Margaret. Even Detective Cole.”
Cole looked sharply at her.
“Leave the child out of this.”
Sarah finally turned toward him.
“You exist because of that child.”
Before Claire could understand what she meant, Margaret reached beneath the blanket covering her legs.
She removed a small metal key.
“Elaine,” she whispered.
Elaine moved immediately.
Beside the stairwell wall stood an old medical cabinet. Elaine unlocked it, pulled the cabinet outward, and revealed a narrow maintenance opening behind it.
Sarah’s calm expression disappeared.
“Stop them.”
Cole entered a code.
The magnetic lock clicked.
Mason raised his gun toward the door.
Claire shoved Lily into the opening.
“Crawl.”
Lily disappeared into the darkness.
Dana followed.
Elaine pushed Margaret’s wheelchair toward the hidden passage, but the opening was too narrow.
“Leave the chair,” Margaret said.
Claire grabbed her mother beneath the arms.
To her shock, Margaret planted both feet on the floor.
She stood.
Unsteadily.
Painfully.
But she stood.
“You can walk?”
“Not well.”
The stairwell door began opening.
Sarah’s security team appeared behind Cole.
Mason fired at the overhead light.
Glass exploded.
The stairwell fell into darkness.
Claire heard Sarah shout an order.
Then Mason grabbed Claire’s wrist.
“There is a laboratory two floors below,” he said. “If Sarah gets Lily there, you will never see her again.”
Claire tore her arm free.
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I was ordered to deliver her there tonight.”
A bullet struck the wall beside Mason’s head.
He fired toward the doorway and forced Sarah’s men back.
“Go!”
Claire helped Margaret through the opening.
Elaine crawled behind them.
Mason remained in the stairwell.
For one moment, Claire looked back at the man she had married.
The man who had lied to her.
The man Lily still called Daddy.
“Why are you helping us?” Claire asked.
Mason’s eyes met hers.
“Because Sarah never planned to let Lily survive the transfer.”
The maintenance passage ended in an abandoned sterilization room.
Dana stood near the opposite door with Lily in her arms.
Red emergency lights pulsed across the walls.
“What transfer?” Claire demanded.
Margaret leaned against a rusted table.
“She means the trust transfer.”
Mason’s voice came through the opening behind them.
“No.”
A fresh burst of gunfire erupted in the stairwell.
Then his voice disappeared.
Claire closed the maintenance panel.
They hurried through a maze of narrow corridors.
Behind them, alarms began ringing.
A recorded message repeated through the building.
“Containment failure. Subject V-Thirty-One must not leave the facility.”
Claire stopped.
“V-Thirty-One?”
Margaret looked at Lily.
“That is her program number.”
Lily’s face went pale.
“I’m not a number.”
Claire knelt and held her daughter’s face.
“No. You are Lily Bennett. You are my daughter.”
A door opened ahead.
Aaron Cole stepped into the corridor.
He had removed his detective’s badge.
A gun hung loosely in his right hand.
Dana moved in front of Lily.
Elaine picked up a broken metal pipe.
Cole glanced behind him.
“You have thirty seconds before Sarah realizes I opened the western service tunnel.”
Claire did not move.
“Why would you help us?”
His eyes settled on Lily.
“Because I think I know why Sarah chose me.”
A security door began lowering between them.
Cole placed his arm beneath it.
“Move!”
Claire pulled Lily forward.
One by one, they slipped under the descending barrier.
Cole came through last.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Sarah’s voice emerged from a speaker above their heads.
“You can run from the hospital, Claire.”
May you like
A surveillance camera rotated toward Lily.
“But you cannot run from her blood.”
