Chapter 81 - The Phantom Brother
The roar of the approaching helicopter beat against the icy mountain face, a rhythmic, thudding bass that vibrated through the steel pins of the shattered trestle. The three searchlights in the distance converged into a single piercing beam of white light, cutting through the swirling blizzard like a scalpel.
"Mommy, who is that?" Lily’s voice was barely a squeak against the howling gale, her teeth chattering so hard I could hear the enamel clicking. She clutched the lapels of Arthur’s oversized coat, her small fingers stiff and blue from the killing frost.
I kept the receiver glued to my ear, my chest heaving with shallow, burning breaths. "Julian?" I whispered, the name tasting like ash and iron on my tongue. "Julian, you died in the North Sea twelve years ago. We identified the wreckage. Father had the memorial service in Boston."
A soft, aristocratic laugh hissed over the satellite link, unaffected by the static of the storm. *"Identification is a luxury bought with a few forged dental records and a burned cabin cruiser, Claire. Father taught me that before he taught me how to ride a horse. Did you truly believe Evelyn had the intellect to coordinate offshore routing across four sovereign jurisdictions? She was a peacock. Beautiful to look at, easy to manipulate, and terribly careless with her silver drives."*
The twin-rotor transport emerged through the low cloud ceiling, its black hull matte and unmarked, hovering like an enormous predatory beetle over the jagged precipice of the Great Gulf. The downdraft struck us with hurricane force, kicking up blinding clouds of granulated ice that stung my cheeks like buckshot.
*"Step away from the center tie, little sister,"* Julian’s voice purred through the speaker. *"Arthur’s dead. Evelyn’s carcass is resting three thousand feet below on the granite rocks. All that remains is the true bloodline. Bring Lily to the winch. We have an empire to restructure, and your little girl carries the primary cryptographic cipher in her head whether she knows it or not."*
I looked down at Lily. Her hazel eyes were wide with terror, but beneath the fear was that uncanny, resolute stillness she had displayed in the ballroom when she first held up the silver drive. She didn't know the full scope of what our grandfather had buried inside her nursery rhymes and bedtime piano scales, but she knew evil when she heard it.
"Claire," Julian’s voice grew colder, stripping away the faux-brotherly warmth. "Don't be sentimental. If the winch goes down without you, the cable team will simply retrieve the girl and leave you on the ties. You have forty seconds before the wind shear forces my pilot to bank."
I looked at the receiver, then down at the severed rail hanging into the bottomless white abyss of the cirque.
May you like
"Go to hell, Julian," I said clearly.
I threw the satellite communicator as hard as I could into the swirling vortex of the chasm, grabbed Lily by the waist, and rolled beneath the heavy oak timber of the emergency maintenance spur just as the helicopter’s blinding floodlight locked onto the trestle.
