The first shot through the kitchen window had missed us by less than four feet.
The second struck the wall above the sink.
Brad dragged the heavy table onto its side while Harris pulled me behind the stone fireplace.
“Keep the baby low.”
“I know how to hold my child.”
“I know.”
“Not you.”
Harris gave me the briefest look.
“Fair.”
Outside, men moved between the trees.
Their flashlights swept across the boarded windows.
Brad crouched beside Daniel’s desk.
“How many?”
Harris looked through a narrow gap.
“At least six.”
“More behind the cars.”
“You expecting an army?”
“No.”
“Daniel clearly was.”
Brad opened another hidden panel.
Inside were floor plans.
Harris grabbed them.
“You said your brother planned exits.”
“He planned everything.”
“Good. Tonight I forgive paranoia.”
Another bullet struck stone.
Elias began crying.
The sound tore through me.
Every instinct said hide him, soothe him, make the world quiet.
Instead the world answered with gunfire.
Brad looked at his son.
I saw panic flash across his face.
“Don’t.”
He met my eyes.
“Don’t freeze because he’s crying. Help us.”
Brad nodded once.
The floor plan showed an underground utility tunnel running from the basement to an old storm cellar sixty yards behind the house.
Harris pointed.
“We take this.”
Brad shook his head.
“They’ll know about it.”
“How?”
“Victor grew up here.”
“Then why would Daniel leave it on the plans?”
“Because Daniel never trusted plans.”
Brad studied the margins.
There were small marks in pencil.
Numbers.
Arrows.
He smiled faintly.
“What?”
“We used codes when we were kids.”
“You keep having useful childhood secrets.”
“He’d be thrilled.”
The smile disappeared.
Brad ran his finger along the wall drawing.
“These arrows don’t point toward the tunnel. They point beneath it.”
Harris frowned.
“Beneath an underground tunnel?”
“There used to be a cistern.”
“That sounds unpleasant.”
“It probably is.”
Another burst of gunfire shattered a front window.
Glass fell across the hall.
Voices shouted outside.
One amplified through a speaker.
“Brad!”
He froze.
The voice was older.
Male.
Familiar to him.
“Come outside. We only want the child.”
My blood turned cold.
Brad stood before I could stop him.
Harris grabbed his coat.
“Don’t.”
The voice came again.
“You know how this ends.”
Brad’s face hardened.
“Victor.”
His uncle.
I looked toward the window.
“That’s him?”
“Yes.”
“Then Daniel was wrong.”
“About what?”
“He said we shouldn’t assume Victor killed him.”
Brad looked toward the dark yard.
“That doesn’t mean Victor didn’t.”
The speaker crackled.
“You were always sentimental, nephew.”
Brad flinched at the word.
Victor continued.
“Your brother made the same mistake.”
Brad stepped toward the broken window.
Harris blocked him.
“You answer from cover.”
Brad shouted, “Daniel knew about Orpheus.”
Silence outside.
Then laughter.
“Daniel knew pieces.”
“You killed him.”
Another pause.
“You still think this is about Daniel?”
Brad looked at Harris.
Victor’s voice came again.
“This began before either of you could walk.”
Brad touched the mark behind his ear.
“Why switch the records?”
“You’re finally asking the right question.”
“Answer it.”
“I’ll tell you everything if you bring me the boy.”
I stood.
Harris reached toward me.
“No.”
I ignored her.
“His name is Elias.”
The yard went silent.
Brad turned.
“Clara—”
“If he wants my baby, he can hear his name.”
Victor answered through the speaker.
“Clara Mendoza.”
Hearing my name in his voice was worse than gunfire.
“We’ve spent months looking for you.”
“I noticed.”
“You were difficult to find.”
“Apparently not difficult enough.”
A low laugh.
“You should ask your husband why.”
I looked at Brad.
His face changed.
Victor continued.
“Ask him who paid to move you after he disappeared.”
My stomach dropped.
I stared at Brad.
“What is he talking about?”
“Clara—”
“Did you arrange my apartment?”
“I arranged for someone to help you relocate.”
“You told me you had no contact.”
“I didn’t.”
“You just said you arranged it.”
“Before I vanished. I had an emergency service transfer your lease and protect your address.”
I felt dizzy.
“You manipulated where I lived.”
“To keep you alive.”
“You watched me?”
“No.”
“Someone did.”
Brad looked sick.
“I didn’t know the service had been compromised.”
Victor’s voice returned.
“Your husband’s secrets kept us entertained.”
Brad shouted toward the window.
“Leave her out of this.”
“Too late.”
A car door slammed outside.
Harris pulled us toward the basement stairs.
“Conversation over.”
We moved.
Brad carried the laptop and Daniel’s records.
I held Elias.
Harris went last.
The basement smelled of damp earth and heating oil.
Brad found the tunnel entrance behind shelves of old jars.
It was sealed by bricks.
“That seems unhelpful,” Harris said.
Brad touched the wall.
“Fake facade.”
He pulled an iron ring.
The entire section swung inward.
Behind it was a narrow stairwell.
We descended.
The ceiling dropped so low Brad had to duck.
At the bottom, the expected tunnel stretched ahead.
Brad ignored it.
He examined the stone floor.
“Daniel.”
“Talk to your dead brother later,” Harris whispered.
“I’m looking.”
He found two initials scratched into a corner.
B + D.
Below them:
LOOK LOWER.
Brad laughed once.
“What?”
“He wrote that when we were ten.”
He lifted a loose stone.
A metal handle lay underneath.
Together, Brad and Harris pulled.
A hatch opened.
Cold air rose.
We climbed into the old cistern.
It had been converted.
Not recently.
Shelves lined the curved walls.
Emergency food.
Batteries.
Medical kits.
Another computer.
And boxes of documents.
Harris stared.
“Your brother prepared a bunker under a fake tunnel.”
“Yes.”
“I’m beginning to like him.”
Brad almost smiled.
Then his eyes found something on the far wall.
A corkboard.
Photographs.
Hundreds.
Sullivan executives.
Hospital administrators.
Patients.
Researchers.
Ricardo.
Victor.
Brad.
Daniel.
And me.
I stepped closer.
My photographs began before I met Brad.
One showed me leaving college.
Another at a coffee shop.
Another walking into my first apartment.
Years before Brad and I married.
“What is this?”
Brad looked genuinely horrified.
“I’ve never seen these.”
A red thread connected my photographs to a file labeled MENDOZA.
Harris pulled it free.
Inside were records about my mother.
Blood tests.
Hospitalizations.
A study enrollment from thirty years earlier.
ORPHEUS MATERNAL COHORT.
My mouth went dry.
“My mother?”
Brad took the paper.
“She was in the project.”
“She never told me.”
“Maybe she didn’t know.”
The records listed a pregnancy.
Me.
Subject outcome: FEMALE LIVE BIRTH.
Long-term follow-up recommended.
I felt the room tilt.
“They were tracking me before I met you.”
Brad stared at me.
“Clara…”
“Don’t.”
“This wasn’t coincidence.”
“Don’t say that.”
But the evidence covered the wall.
Brad and I had believed we met accidentally at a bookstore after he spilled coffee across a display.
What if someone had put us in the same place?
Harris turned pages quickly.
“Here.”
A later memo.
Potential pairing identified: Sullivan male carrier / Mendoza maternal-line subject.
Brad went pale.
“No.”
I grabbed the page.
Recommended observation only. No direct intervention authorized.
“Pairing?”
My voice barely worked.
Brad shook his head.
“I swear I didn’t know.”
“How can I believe you?”
“You can’t.”
The answer stopped me.
He looked shattered.
“You shouldn’t believe anything I say without proof anymore.”
Outside, a muffled explosion shook dust from the ceiling.
Elias startled.
I held him tighter.
Harris looked through the records.
“Someone viewed your marriage as a genetic event.”
“That is not a sentence I ever wanted to hear,” I whispered.
Brad found another box.
Inside were neonatal data sheets.
His.
Daniel’s.
And a third name.
MATTHEW REED.
Harris froze.
“That’s the name inside the white coat.”
We stared at her.
The coat worn by the man who had introduced himself as Ricardo.
“No,” Brad said.
“What?”
“Matthew Reed was the Orpheus pediatric coordinator.”
“He’s alive?”
Brad flipped through the pages.
“He shouldn’t be. He would be over eighty.”
Harris opened a personnel photograph.
The man was young, perhaps thirty-five.
But the eyes were unmistakable.
The physician who had cried beside my hospital bed.
“That wasn’t Ricardo,” I whispered.
Brad took the photo.
His hand shook.
“Matthew Reed.”
“The man who knew your father’s name. Who knew your last call. Who carried your wedding ring.”
Brad stared at the picture.
“He had access to Daniel’s investigation.”
Harris looked toward the ceiling.
“And he may have deliberately pointed us toward Ricardo.”
Another explosion.
Closer.
The bunker lights flickered.
Brad opened the laptop.
A message was already displayed.
Not a file.
A live text screen.
WELCOME BACK, DANIEL.
Brad froze.
The cursor blinked.
Then new words appeared.
YOU TOOK LONG ENOUGH.
Harris moved beside him.
“Someone is connected remotely.”
Brad typed.
WHO ARE YOU?
The reply came immediately.
YOU KNOW.
Brad’s jaw tightened.
NO.
Three dots appeared.
Then:
ASK YOUR FATHER WHICH SON DIED.
Brad stared.
A second message followed.
VICTOR IS NOT THERE TO KILL YOU.
I looked toward the ceiling.
“Then why is he shooting at us?”
Another message appeared.
HE IS THERE TO KEEP REED FROM TAKING THE CHILD.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: Victor Broke Into Daniel’s Bunker to Save Elias, and the Man We Thought Was Ricardo Finally Revealed Why Brad Had Been Chosen
The Doctor Cried When He Saw My Newborn Son—Then He Told Me My Husband Was Never Gone
Part 7 of 15
