Chapter 73: Without Proof

The fireball wasn't Hollywood. It wasn't a slow-motion blossom of orange and red. It was a flash of white heat, a concussion that knocked the wind out of me even from fifty yards away. The smell of jet fuel and burning plastic hit us a second later, acrid and choking.

"Mark!" Ben shouted, but I was already running. Not to the plane. To Mark.

He was still on the tarmac, his chest heaving, blood pooling beneath him like a shadow. His eyes were open, staring at the burning wreckage.

"Did I..." he gasped, a bubble of blood forming on his lips. "Did I get her?"

"You got her," I said, dropping to my knees beside him. "You grounded her."

Sirens wailed in the distance—fire trucks, ambulances, police cars. The airport was waking up to the disaster.

"The baby," Lucia said, pointing to the wreckage.

The fuselage had split open near the cockpit. The tail section was intact, but the front was an inferno.

"He's gone," Ben said, his voice heavy. "No one could survive that."

I looked at the fire. The heat was intense, pushing us back.

"No," I whispered. "She wouldn't let him die. She needs him."

Then I saw it.

Movement in the smoke.

A figure emerged from the broken fuselage. Not Edith. Not the pilot.

A man in a jumpsuit. The mechanic.

He was carrying something wrapped in a fire blanket.

He stumbled away from the flames, coughing, his face blackened with soot. He collapsed on the grass, twenty feet from the wreck.

I ran to him.

"The baby," I said, reaching for the bundle.

The mechanic looked up at me, his eyes wide with shock. He didn't speak. He just handed me the blanket.

I pulled back the edge.

The baby was crying. His face was red, streaked with ash, but he was moving. He was alive.

"He's okay," I sobbed, clutching him to my chest. "He's okay."

"Edith?" Mark whispered from the ground.

I looked back at the plane. The cockpit was fully engulfed now. There was no movement. No escape.

"She's gone," I said.

The fire trucks roared onto the tarmac, spraying foam onto the burning metal. Paramedics swarmed around Mark, loading him onto a gurney.

"We have a pulse!" one of them shouted. "But it's weak. We need to move!"

They loaded him into the ambulance. I tried to follow, but a police officer blocked my path.

"Ma'am, you need to stay here. We have questions."

"My brother is dying," I said. "And this is my nephew."

I held up the baby. The officer hesitated, looking at the infant, then at the burning plane.

"Go," he said. "But don't leave the hospital."

We rode in the second ambulance—me, the baby, and Lucia. Ben followed in the car.

At the hospital, chaos reigned. Mark was rushed into surgery. The baby—Leo's genetic twin—was taken to the NICU for observation.

I sat in the waiting room, still covered in soot and Mark's blood. Lucia sat beside me, her head in her hands.

"Is it really over?" she asked.

"Edith is dead," I said. "The plane crashed. She didn't get out."

"But Martha," Lucia said. "She's still out there. She fell, but... did they find a body?"

I froze.

I hadn't checked. I had watched her fall, watched her slip into the abyss of the city, but I hadn't seen her land.

"Vance," I said. "I need to call Vance."

I dialed his number. It went straight to voicemail.

"He's probably in debriefing," Lucia said.

"Or he's dead," I said. "Like Thorne."

My phone buzzed.

A text.

Not from Vance. Not from Ben.

Unknown number.

*You think fire cleanses?*

*It only tempers.*

Attached was a video file.

I clicked play.

The footage was shaky, grainy. It showed the crash site from a distance. The plane burning. The fire trucks arriving.

But then the camera zoomed in.

Not on the plane. On the grass, fifty yards away.

A figure was crawling through the tall weeds. Dragging a leg.

Edith.

She was burned. Her clothes were rags. But she was moving. Crawling toward the perimeter fence. Toward the woods.

And in her hand, she clutched a small, silver canister.

The cryo tank.

I stared at the screen.

"She had a spare," I whispered.

"What?" Lucia asked.

"The tank I threw off the roof," I said. "It wasn't the only one. She had another one on the plane."

The video ended.

I looked at the text again.

*The legacy survives.*

I stood up.

"We have to go," I said.

"Where?" Lucia asked. "Sarah, you're exhausted. Mark is in surgery. The baby..."

"The baby is safe," I said. "For now. But Edith isn't dead. And she has the samples."

"She's hurt," Lucia said. "She can't get far."

"She doesn't need to go far," I said. "She just needs a lab."

I thought about the list of properties. The Sanctuary was gone. The Estate was compromised. The brownstone was a crime scene.

But there was one place we had forgotten. One place that wasn't on any list.

The place where it all started.

Not the hospital. Not the house.

"The cabin," I said.

"What cabin?"

"The hunting lodge," I said. "In the Adirondacks. Archibald's retreat. The one place Edith hated."

"Why would she go there?"

"Because it has a generator," I said. "And a freezer."

I looked at Lucia.

"And because it's where she buried her first mistake."

"What mistake?"

"Her mother," I said. "Maria Elena."