Chapter 6 - The Viper in the Nursery
The cold realized in that single sentence froze my heart faster than the winter gale sweeping off the lake.
Julian Vance had free run of my estate. He had been left inside my private residence, with my daughters, while my entire security core followed me to 47th Street.
""Viktor!"" I bellowed over the wind, sprinting toward the lead Maybach. ""Radio the estate! Code Red! Full lockdown! Nobody enters or leaves the residential wing!""
Viktor scrambled into the passenger seat, barking commands into the encrypted radio. ""Base command, this is Lead One! Report status! Base command, acknowledge!""
Static hissed through the speaker. Then a ragged breath crackled across the channel. It was the gate captain. ""Boss... Dr. Vance... he authorized an emergency medical transfer for Emma twenty minutes ago. Claimed she had internal organ failure from malnutrition. Elena refused to let him take her, and... shots fired in the grand hall. Julian took both girls into his medical transport! They’re heading north toward the private airstrip in Waukegan!""
""I will flay him alive,"" I whispered, the words escaping my chest like steam from an open furnace.
I slammed the Maybach into drive, spinning the heavy armored vehicle around on the rain-slicked dock, tires screaming against the wet asphalt as we launched onto the expressway. The twin-turbocharged V12 engine roared like an enraged beast, accelerating through sixty, eighty, one hundred miles per hour, slicing through the midnight traffic like a ghost ship.
Behind us, four escort SUVs formed a flying wedge, their red and blue grille strobes piercing the swirling curtain of sleet.
""Miller!"" I shouted into the dashboard hands-free console. ""Track Julian's vehicle! Ping the transponder on his medical van!""
""I have him, Mr. Blackwell!"" Miller's voice echoed through the speakers, keyboards clattering in the background. ""He’s on Interstate 94 heading toward the corporate hangars at Waukegan Regional Airport. A private Gulfstream filed a flight plan for Zurich fifteen minutes ago. He’s three miles ahead of you, but the highway patrol is reporting multiple spinouts near Skokie. Traffic is bottlenecked!""
""Viktor,"" I said without glancing away from the blurred road. ""Call the hangar control tower. Tell the flight director that if that Gulfstream turns a turbine before I arrive, I will buy the entire airport by sunrise and bulldoze it into Lake Michigan with everyone inside.""
""Understood, Boss.""
May you like
Through the cascading wall of rain, red taillights began to cluster across four lanes of the highway. A jackknifed tractor-trailer blocked the center lanes, traffic backed up for half a mile. But through the sea of flashing hazard lights, I spotted the high-profile white roof of Vance's private ambulance, its amber flashers cutting through the gloom as it used the emergency shoulder to bypass the wreckage.
I didn't tap the brakes. I jerked the heavy steering wheel hard to the right, driving the Maybach over the gravel embankment, flattening traffic cones and tearing through roadside brush at eighty miles per hour. Mud and shredded gravel hammered against the armored undercarriage. We pulled parallel to the ambulance just as it cleared the bottleneck and hit the open stretch of tarmac leading toward the airport access road.
