Chapter 3 - The Warning Hidden In The Blood
The pager on my hip vibrated with a shrill, piercing tone.
Everyone in the library snapped their attention toward me.
I pulled it off my belt. It was a standard-issue emergency alert pager from my agency, but the message scrolling across the tiny LCD screen wasn’t from dispatch.
D-3 COMPROMISED. PROTOCOL INITIATED. 40 MINUTES.
I stared at the screen, my blood turning to ice.
“Claire?” Dante asked, his voice sharp, cutting through his own shock. “What is it?”
I held up the pager.
“D-3. That’s what was written on the back of your childhood photograph. Subject D-3.”
Santoro gasped, stumbling backward until he hit the mahogany bookshelf.
“He triggered it,” the doctor whispered in absolute terror. “The old man triggered the fail-safe.”
“Speak English, Santoro!” Anthony yelled, grabbing the doctor by the lapels of his suit.
“The treatments!” Santoro cried, pointing at the shattered vials of medication on the floor. “The nebulizer wasn’t just poisoning him. It was a chemical marker. If Dante stopped taking it… if the sequence was broken… his cellular structure would begin to collapse. It’s a dead-man’s switch to ensure he never stopped the protocol!”
I looked at Dante.
A fine sheen of cold sweat had broken out across his forehead. His breathing was becoming audibly labored, a slight wheeze echoing in his chest.
“How long?” I demanded, shifting entirely into trauma-nurse mode. “How long until cardiac arrest?”
“Without the stabilizer?” Santoro stammered. “Forty minutes. Maybe less.”
Sofia screamed. Bianca dropped to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably.
Dante didn’t look afraid. He looked furious.
He grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair.
“We don’t have forty minutes to waste,” Dante said, his voice gravelly but firm. “Anthony. Get the cars. We are going to Elena’s house right now.”
“Dad, you’re dying!” Sofia cried, running to him and grabbing his arm.
“I am going to find my daughter, Sofia,” Dante said softly, kissing her forehead. “Even if it’s the last thing I do.”
I grabbed my medical bag.
“I’m coming with you,” I said.
“No, Claire,” Dante commanded. “This is family business. It’s going to get violent.”
“I don’t care about your family business,” I shot back, zipping the heavy leather bag. “You have a chemical time bomb in your bloodstream and I am the only person here who can synthesize a counter-agent on the move. You want to live long enough to save your daughter? You’re taking the nurse.”
Dante stared at me.
For a fraction of a second, respect flared in his dark eyes.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Ten minutes later, we were tearing through the midnight streets of Chicago in a bulletproof black SUV. Anthony was driving like a madman. I was in the backseat with Dante, frantically mixing a heavy dose of epinephrine and corticosteroids to keep his airway open.
“Roll up your sleeve,” I ordered.
Dante complied without a word. I administered the injection directly into his muscle. He barely flinched.
“Elena thinks she’s an orphan,” Dante said quietly, staring out the tinted window. “She thinks Bianca is just a wealthy benefactor who funded her charity. My wife hid her in plain sight.”
“Elizabeth knew your father would look for her,” I said gently. “She saved Elena’s life.”
“And now my father has her.”
The SUV slammed to a halt, the tires screeching against the pavement.
We were parked outside a modest, two-story brick house in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
The front door was wide open.
The wood around the deadbolt was entirely splintered.
Anthony drew his weapon and moved up the walkway. Dante followed, pulling a heavy pistol from his shoulder holster despite the slight tremor in his hands.
I stayed close behind them.
The house was completely silent. The living room was a disaster zone. Lamps were shattered. The sofa was overturned. A struggle had happened here, and Elena had clearly fought back.
“Clear!” Anthony yelled from the kitchen.
Dante stood in the center of the living room, his chest heaving, his breathing becoming shallower despite my injection.
“They took her,” Dante whispered, the devastation cracking his voice.
“Mr. Romano,” I said quietly, pointing to the hardwood floor near the overturned coffee table.
Lying amidst the broken glass was a small, crumpled piece of construction paper.
Dante picked it up.
It was a child’s drawing. Crayon.
It depicted a woman with dark hair holding hands with a little boy. Above them, written in messy, uneven letters, were the words:
Mommy and Leo.
Dante stared at the drawing.
May you like
“Leo?” Dante asked, his voice trembling. “Who is Leo?”
Before I could answer, a tiny, terrified whimper came from inside the hallway coat closet.
