Chapter 33: The Specimen

I hit her at the waist, my shoulder driving into her midsection. It was a tackle born of pure, unthinking instinct, fueled by thirty years of quiet rage. Edith gasped, the air leaving her lungs in a sharp *whoosh* as we crashed to the polished concrete floor.

The remote skidded out of her hand.

"Get it!" I screamed.

Mark scrambled for the black fob, his shoes slipping on the smooth surface. He grabbed it just as it was about to slide under the bed.

"I have it!" he yelled, holding it up like a trophy.

I rolled off Edith, pinning her arms with my knees. She struggled, her strength surprising for a woman her age, but I had the weight of adrenaline on my side.

"Ben!" I shouted. "Tie her!"

Ben was already there. He pulled a length of zip ties from his tool belt—a contractor's habit—and secured her wrists behind her back.

Edith stopped fighting. She lay on the floor, her breathing ragged, her perfectly coiffed hair now a disheveled mess. She looked up at me, her eyes burning with a cold, venomous hate.

"You stupid girl," she hissed. "Do you think this changes anything? The police will be here in minutes. I called them the moment you broke the lock."

"Let them come," I said, standing up. "We have the proof. We have the birth certificate. We have the ledger."

"You have stolen property," she said. "And the word of a mentally ill woman and a disgruntled employee."

She looked at Leo, who was standing in the doorway, pale and shaking.

"And him," she sneered. "A man who hasn't seen the sun in thirty years. Do you think a jury will believe he's competent? I'll have him committed before the ink is dry on the arrest report."

"No," Leo said. His voice was quiet, but it didn't waver. "You won't."

He walked into the room. He looked around the bunker, at the luxury she had built for herself while he rotted in a cell. Then he looked at her.

"I remember," he said.

"You remember nothing," Edith spat. "I raised you. I fed you. I kept you safe."

"You kept me buried," Leo said. "But you forgot one thing, Aunt Edith."

"I'm not your aunt!" she screamed, thrashing against the zip ties. "I am the matriarch! I am the Sterling name!"

"You're a fraud," I said. "And we're done listening to you."

I turned to Ben. "Is there a way out? Besides the ramp?"

"There's an air intake shaft," Ben said, pointing to a vent near the ceiling. "It probably leads to the garden. But it's tight."

"We can't leave her here," Mark said, looking at the remote in his hand. "If the police are coming, we need to be gone before they get here. But we can't leave her with this."

He gestured to the bunker. The gas lines. The accelerant.

"If we leave her," I said, "she'll find a way to blow it. She'd rather destroy the evidence than face the consequences."

"Then we take her with us," Ben said.

"No," I said. "She's too dangerous. We leave her. But we take her leverage."

I went to the vanity. I grabbed her purse. Her phone. Her passport.

And then I saw it.

Sitting on the vanity, next to a bottle of perfume, was a small, plastic container.

A cheek swab kit.

It was open. The swab was sealed in the tube.

I picked it up.

"What is this?" I asked.

Edith went still.

"It's nothing," she said quickly. "A genetic test. For my... health."

"You're lying," I said. "You never do anything for your health. You do things for control."

I looked at the label on the tube. It was dated yesterday.

*Subject: Unknown.*

"Whose DNA is this, Edith?" I demanded.

She pressed her lips together, refusing to speak.

"Is it Clara's?" I asked. "Did you swab her before you put her on the plane?"

No answer.

"Or is it... yours?" I asked. "To prove you're not a Sterling?"

She laughed then. A sharp, barking sound. "Why would I prove that? That's the one thing I need to hide."

"Then whose is it?"

I looked at Leo. Then at Mark.

And then I realized.

There was one person whose DNA we hadn't accounted for. One person whose genetic material was the key to everything.

"It's Leo's," I whispered.

I looked at Leo. "Did she touch you? Before she left?"

Leo nodded. "She... she wiped my cheek. She said I had dirt on my face."

"She didn't wipe it," I said. "She swabbed it."

I looked at Edith. "Why? You already know who he is. You stole him."

"Because," Edith said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I needed to be sure. Before I... finalized the transaction."

"Transaction?"

"The plane wasn't going to Zurich," she said. "It was going to a clinic. In Russia."

"What kind of clinic?"

"A stem cell clinic," she said. "Clara needed a transplant. For her... condition."

"Clara doesn't have a condition," I said. "You made that up."

"She does now," Edith smiled. "I made sure of it."

My blood ran cold.

"You poisoned her," I said.

"I induced a need," Edith corrected. "A need that only a direct genetic match could fill. A son."

She looked at Leo.

"I wasn't taking Clara away to hide her," she said. "I was taking her away to harvest her."

"Harvest her?"

"Bone marrow," she said. "Organs. Whatever I needed to keep the one person alive who controls the trust."

"But Clara controls the trust if the heir is male," I said. "If Leo is alive."

"Exactly," Edith said. "Clara controls it. But if Clara is... incapacitated... or undergoing a medical procedure... her power of attorney kicks in."

"And you have her power of attorney," I said.

"I have everything," Edith said.

She had planned to use Leo's biology to save Clara, just long enough to drain the accounts, and then...

"And then you were going to kill them both," I said.

"They are redundant," she said. "Inefficient."

I looked at the cheek swab. It wasn't just a test. It was a compatibility check for a murder weapon.

"We have to go," I said. "Now."

We left her there, tied and furious, screaming curses at our backs. We climbed the ramp, emerging into the cool night air. The sirens were louder now, closing in.

We ran through the alley, back to the car.

"Where now?" Ben asked, starting the engine.

"The hospital," I said. "We need to get Leo tested. Officially. Before she finds a way to spin this."

"And Clara?" Mark asked.

"The plane took off," I said. "We can't stop it."

"Maybe we can," Leo said.

We all looked at him.

"She gave me a phone," he said. "In the basement. An old one. For emergencies."

He pulled a brick-like Nokia from his pocket.

"It has a tracker," he said. "She put a tracker on everything. Even Clara."

"On Clara?" I asked.

"On the wheelchair," Leo said. "I saw her put a tag on it. She said it was for 'luggage'."

He held up the phone. On the tiny, pixelated screen, a red dot was blinking.

It wasn't moving fast. In fact, it had stopped.

"Where is it?" I asked.

Leo zoomed out on the map.

"It's not over the Atlantic," he said.

"It's at the county airfield," Ben said. "They must have landed. Maybe a mechanical issue? Or..."

"Or she didn't get on the plane," I whispered.

I thought about the bag she threw out. The struggle.

"Edith got off," I said. "But Clara... Clara might still be on board."

"If the plane is on the ground," Mark said, "we can get to her."

I looked at the map. The county airfield was ten miles away.

"Go," I said to Ben. "Drive."

We tore through the streets, the engine whining in protest. The red dot on the screen was stationary. Waiting.

We pulled up to the fence of the county airfield twenty minutes later. The white jet was there, parked on the far side of the runway. It was dark. Silent.

"Why did they land?" Ben asked.

"Maybe the pilot got spooked," Mark said. "Or maybe Edith called them back."

We cut the lock on the gate with the bolt cutters from Ben's truck. We drove onto the tarmac, headlights off.

We reached the plane. The door was closed.

"Clara!" I shouted, banging on the fuselage.

No answer.

Ben boosted Mark up to the wing. Mark scrambled to the emergency exit and popped the latch.

The door swung open.

Mark climbed inside. A moment later, his face appeared in the doorway. He looked pale.

"She's here," he said.

"Is she okay?"

"She's... she's alone," Mark said. "The pilot is gone. The crew is gone."

"And Clara?"

"She's strapped into her seat," Mark said.

"Bring her down!"

"I can't," Mark said. "Sarah