Chapter 6 - THE PRIVATE CLINIC
Mara didn't wait for Matteo to lose his mind. She lunged forward, grabbed Matteo by the arm, and hauled him backward toward the grand doors.
"She’s stalling, Matteo! Come on!" Mara shouted.
They spilled back out into the rain. Matteo was breathing in ragged, violent gasps, his vision swimming with rage. "Zurich. She said Zurich. Mara, call the FAA—call the private terminals at Teterboro and JFK—"
"Luciana is lying to you," Mara snapped, shoving him into the driver’s seat and jumping into the passenger side. "A medical transport to Switzerland requires forty-eight hours of international clearance, embassy health declarations, and bilateral flight manifests. You can't just throw an undocumented, legally dead woman onto a Gulfstream without a paper trail that would light up every radar in the Department of Homeland Security."
"Then where is she?!"
"Dr. Vance’s primary research facility isn't in Zurich," Mara said, pulling up a satellite map on her ruggedized tablet. "It’s in High Falls, Ulster County. An old sanatorium converted into a private neuroscience retreat. Duca Pharmaceuticals funds eighty percent of their clinical trials. It's seventy minutes north of here."
Matteo slammed the Range Rover into reverse, spun the vehicle across the ruined lawn, and rocketed out of the estate gates, the V8 engine screaming as he merged onto the northbound interstate.
The storm worsened as they drove into the Hudson Valley. Rain lashed the windshield in blinding sheets, the wipers slapping in a frantic, useless rhythm.
"Talk to me about the Blue Room," Matteo said, his hands clamped to the steering wheel at ten and two, his knuckles stark white. "How was she getting into the penthouse from Ulster County?"
Mara had her phone pressed to her ear, listening to a private investigator contact. She muted the call and turned to Matteo.
"Elena didn't drive herself," Mara said grimly. "Someone was bringing her. I just pulled the toll logs for the George Washington Bridge matching the duplicate transponder issued to your mother’s estate staff. A black commercial van crossed into Manhattan at 1:15 AM on Tuesday, parked three blocks from your building, and crossed back into New Jersey at 3:30 AM."
"Who drives the van?"
"Thomas Wright. He’s been your mother's head of estate security for twelve years."
"Thomas?" Matteo shook his head, baffled. "Thomas taught me how to shoot skeet when I was twelve. He was loyal to my father."
"And maybe he’s loyal to what’s right," Mara said. "Think about it, Matteo. If Thomas was ordered to guard a woman who was supposed to be dead, a woman who wept every night for her baby girl... how long could an old soldier watch that before his conscience broke?"
Matteo looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. *9:45 AM.*
"If Vance discovered she was spitting out her sedatives," Matteo said, his throat tightening, "what will he do to her?"
"A woman declared dead sixteen months ago has no civil rights, Matteo," Mara said quietly, her voice devoid of comfort. "To the law, Elena Duca does not exist. If Vance thinks the conspiracy is unraveling, he won't let her become a witness."
Matteo pressed the accelerator flat against the floorboards. The SUV surged forward at ninety miles per hour, slicing through the gray wall of rain.
By 10:45 AM, the dense woods of Ulster County closed in around them.
The facility appeared suddenly behind a screen of towering white pines: a sprawling, three-story mid-century compound constructed of reinforced concrete and dark-tinted glass, surrounded by a double-perimeter chain-link fence topped with razor wire. A bronze sign at the security gate read: *THE PINE RIDGE FOUNDATION - NEUROLOGICAL RESTORATION CENTER.*
The gate was down, guarded by two private security officers in tactical windbreakers.
"How do you want to handle this?" Mara asked, drawing her semi-automatic pistol from her holster and racking the slide with a crisp, metallic *clack*.
Matteo didn't slow down.
"Seatbelt, Mara."
"Matteo—"
"Put your seatbelt on!"
May you like
Matteo locked his elbows, aimed the heavy steel brush-guard of the Range Rover directly at the hydraulic arm of the security barrier, and floored the throttle.
***
