Chapter 6 - A MOTHER’S TREASON
I stood motionless in the center of the doorway. Miller stepped wide to my left, weapon raised, covering the flanking shadows of the freezer room.
“Lower the weapon, Eleanor,” I said. The sound of my own voice surprised me—it carried no tremor, no anger, only the chilling stillness of an executioner reading a decree.
Eleanor let out a sharp, brittle laugh that echoed off the stainless-steel panels. “Or what, Sebastian? You’ll court-martial me? You’ll give another noble speech before the Senate committee?” She raised the pistol three inches, aiming it directly at my chest. “You destroyed everything. We had access to billions in European contracts through Aegis Horizon, and you threw it all away for your pathetic little moral crusade about military integrity.”
“You sold your own son,” I said, taking one measured step forward.
“I secured his future!” she hissed, the mask of cold elegance slipping to reveal the raw, manic desperation underneath. “Do you think I wanted to raise a boy on a military pension while you spent nine months a year in combat zones? Sterling offered me twenty million dollars in bearer bonds and a diplomatic estate outside Zurich. All I had to do was keep Lucas out of your reach until the Aegis contract cleared the defense appropriations bill. You wouldn’t dare vote to defund a company that held your son’s life in their hands.”
“Where is he?”
“Look around you, darling,” she sneered, gesturing with the barrel toward the empty chair. “Do you see him? You’re twenty minutes late. The boat captain already carried him down the maintenance tunnel to the slipway. By sunrise, he’ll be across the Canadian border. By next week, you won’t even remember what his voice sounds like.”
“She’s lying, General,” Jackson’s voice cut into my ear from the radio. “The launch at Slip 14 hasn’t unmoored. But I’m picking up high-rev engine sounds coming from the western drainage tunnel under the locks. They’re moving him on foot through the subterranean utility conduits!”
Eleanor saw the shift in my eyes. Her finger tightened on the trigger. “Don’t look away from me! Look at me, Sebastian! You lost! You lost your family, you lost your boy, and tonight you lose your—”
Before she could finish the syllable, Miller fired.
A rubberized ceramic baton struck Eleanor’s wrist with brutal force. The silver pistol flew from her grip, clattering across the wet concrete. She shrieked, clutching her fractured wrist to her chest, tumbling against the steel table.
I crossed the room in two strides, standing over her like an avalanche frozen in mid-air. I reached down, pulled the leather satchel slung across her shoulder, and unzipped it with one hand.
Inside were four encrypted external hard drives, two forged Canadian passports with Lucas’s photograph under an alias, and a stack of classified defense procurement authorizations signed by Major General Victor Sterling.
“You called Lucas leverage,” I said down to her, my voice dropping to a near whisper. “To me, he is everything. And you have nothing left.”
I turned to Miller. “Zip-tie her to the support pillar. Leave the beacon active for Metro SWAT. We have three minutes to reach the drainage conduit.”
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“Sebastian, please!” she screamed behind me, her voice breaking into hysterical sobs as she struggled against the nylon ties. “Sterling will kill me if you take those drives! He’ll kill us all!”
I didn’t turn around. I sprinted into the dark tunnel beyond the meat locker, following the fresh footprints of a child’s stockinged feet pressed into the damp silt.
