Chapter 17 - The Face in the Mirror
Dawn broke over Long Island Sound not with warmth, but with a suffocating blanket of gray sea fog.
The Newport Marina was a ghost town at 6:00 AM. Mega-yachts worth hundreds of millions of dollars bobbed rhythmically against the pylons, their sleek white hulls fading into the mist like predatory sea beasts.
Mark had left Clara and Lily in a secure, steel-reinforced shipping container at a commercial dock five miles south, guarded by Miller and two trusted retired combat veterans from Mark’s former unit. It was the only place he knew they would be safe—completely off the grid, insulated by steel and armed to the teeth.
Mark wore a black diving suit beneath a heavy oilskin coat. In his pocket was the brass key. In his tactical sling hung an suppressed MPX submachine gun.
He slipped between the shadows of the marina, his boots silent on the wet teak docks. Pier 4. Slip 12.
The vessel moored there was not a pleasure cruiser. It was a 160-foot shadow-class expedition ship named *The Leviathan*. Its hull was matte black, radar-absorbent, and completely devoid of registration flags.
Mark bypassed the gangway security cameras using an electromagnetic scrambler he had pocketed from the safehouse. He boarded from the stern, stepping onto the hydraulic swim platform.
The air smelled intensely of ozone and gardenias.
Gardenias.
Mark’s heart seized. It was the perfume Brenda Collins had worn. The scent that had haunted his house for three years while Clara was buried alive.
He moved through the main salon like a wraith. The interior was lavish, appointed with polished mahogany and Italian leather, but completely abandoned. Empty champagne flutes sat on the marble bar. A laptop on the mahogany desk was humming, running an automated data-wiping script that was currently at eighty-seven percent.
Mark pulled a flash drive from his vest and jammed it into the port, interrupting the wipe and mirroring the drive.
Then, he heard the footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. The rhythmic click of high heels on marble.
Mark swung his weapon around the corner of the state room, finger on the trigger.
Standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling mirror, applying crimson lipstick with terrifying calm, was a woman. Her hair was platinum blonde, her face smooth, unblemished, and unmistakably familiar.
Brenda Collins turned slowly, flashing a radiant, predatory smile.
"You really are relentless, Mark," she purred, dropping the lipstick into an alligator-skin clutch. "You always were the only variable we couldn't properly calculate."
"Hands where I can see them," Mark said, his voice flat, dead, devoid of humanity. "Or I blow your skull across that bulkhead."
Brenda laughed—a rich, musical sound that made Mark’s stomach heave. "Go ahead. Shoot me. But if my heart stops beating for more than thirty seconds, the bio-telemetry link in my chest sends an override signal to the atmospheric scrubbers in the shipping container where you left Clara and Lily."
Mark’s breath caught in his throat.
May you like
Brenda tilted her head, her smile widening into something demonic. "You think you chose that shipping container by chance, Mark? Who do you think owns the port?"
***
