Chapter 11 - THE SAFE HOUSE ATTACK
Federal agents took defensive positions as bullets struck the reinforced windows.
Emma pulled Ethan behind a concrete kitchen island. William crawled beside them.
“Stay low,” he said.
Ethan covered his ears. “She found us because of me.”
“No,” Emma said. “Because adults hid a tracker in your things.”
The front door shook under a metal ram.
Ortiz shouted orders from the hall.
A second team moved through the back garden, but Daniel had placed road spikes and smoke bombs around the property.
Isabella spoke again through the hacked system.
“William, Grace was alive after she went into the water.”
William froze.
“She reached the dock,” Isabella continued. “She called your private number three times.”
William looked at his old phone records on a nearby evidence tablet.
Three missed calls had been deleted that night.
“Who deleted them?” he shouted.
“Your assistant,” Isabella answered. “On my instructions.”
The front door burst inward.
Daniel entered behind smoke, wearing body armor.
Ortiz fired. He dropped behind a wall and returned fire.
Emma pulled Ethan toward the basement shelter.
A masked attacker came through the pantry window and grabbed her.
She drove an elbow into his chest, but he held on. William hit him with a fire extinguisher and dragged Emma free.
They reached the shelter door.
Ethan stopped.
“I can't go underground.”
Emma saw the basement room in his face.
She knelt despite the gunfire.
“This door stays open. I stay where you can see me.”
He nodded once.
They entered.
William remained outside to help Ortiz.
A moment later, Daniel stumbled into the hall, bleeding from his shoulder. He saw the shelter and raised his gun.
William tackled him.
They crashed through a glass partition.
Emma shielded Ethan.
Daniel reached for the gun again.
Ethan spotted the emergency door control on the shelter wall.
He slapped the red button.
A steel fire door dropped between Daniel and the weapon, pinning Daniel's arm to the floor.
Agents arrested him.
The attack ended within minutes.
Isabella was not among the captured suspects.
Daniel laughed as paramedics treated him.
“You still don't understand. She doesn't need Ethan anymore.”
William grabbed his collar. “What does that mean?”
“The transfer happened at noon.”
Martin checked Sterling Global's records.
The controlling shares were gone.
They had been moved not to Isabella's trust, but to a company registered under Grace Sterling's name.
Grace had been dead for two years.
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Yet the company's security camera showed a woman using her passport that morning.
The woman looked exactly like her.
