Chapter 39 - The Highway Ambush
"You're a monster," David said, his voice dropping into a lethal, low register. "The Consortium tried to incinerate you, Mother. You're dying in a cage."
Evelyn coughed, a dry, rattling sound that registered on the cardiac monitors behind her. "The Consortium... is merely the administrative board, David. *I* designed the sequence. *I* hold the master encryption keys. They need me alive. And they need Asset 409."
"You'll never touch either of them again," Leah hissed from the passenger seat, leaning into the camera frame. "We have the registry. We have the files. We’re going to expose every single child you sold, Evelyn!"
Evelyn smiled—a terrifying, bloodless parting of lips. "Expose them to whom, Leah? To the Attorney General whose second son was born in my Boston laboratory? To the Director of National Intelligence whose leukemia was cured using stem cells harvested from Maya’s placental line?"
She turned her gaze back to David. "Look in your side mirrors, my boy."
David’s eyes flicked instantly to the truck's exterior mirror.
Two hundred yards behind them on Route 9, three identical black Chevrolet Suburbans had just turned off the exit ramp, moving in perfect tactical echelon, closing the distance at high speed. Their front brush guards gleamed under the gray winter sky.
"The Faraday wrap was clever, David," Evelyn whispered into the phone. "A very commendable attempt. But the transponder operates on a low-frequency magnetic pulse. It doesn't need cellular towers. It pings satellite constellations."
David crushed the burner phone beneath the heel of his work boot, threw the truck into gear, and slammed the accelerator to the floor.
The heavy tires spun on the slush, caught the asphalt, and the Ford rocketed forward onto the highway just as the lead Suburban accelerated to ram them.
"Hold them!" David roared.
Leah threw herself over both babies in the passenger seat, tucking her head between her knees.
The first impact hit the rear quarter-panel with the force of an artillery shell. Metal shrieked. The truck fishtailed violently across the two-lane highway, the back tires skidding along the guardrail, spitting a rooster tail of sparks into the winter air.
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David fought the steering wheel with everything he had, his arms burning, keeping the heavy truck from flipping. Through the rear window, the second Suburban pulled alongside the driver’s side, its tinted window rolling down to reveal a black-clad contractor raising a high-pressure pneumatic pit-maneuver arm aimed directly at their front axle.
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