Chapter 5 - The Night They Ran
Emergency lighting washed the penthouse in red.
Alfred grabbed Mina's hand.
“Stay with me.”
Glass shattered somewhere below.
Lev's voice came through the darkness.
“Service corridor. Now.”
They moved.
Mina had imagined running countless times.
She had imagined airports, anonymous hotels, and empty highways.
She had never imagined running beside Alfred while armed men invaded his home.
A gunshot cracked from the lower floor.
Mina stumbled.
Alfred caught her.
“Don't look back.”
They reached the service stairs.
Lev appeared behind them with two security men.
“Garage is compromised.”
“Roof?” Alfred asked.
“Too exposed.”
“Then where?”
Lev hesitated.
“The old tunnel.”
Alfred stared at him.
“That still exists?”
“Your father never closed it.”
They descended into the building's maintenance level.
Mina's lungs burned.
Alfred kept one hand around hers.
At the bottom, Lev unlocked an unmarked steel door.
Behind it was a narrow underground passage.
“You have a secret tunnel?” Mina whispered.
Alfred glanced at her.
“My father had trust issues.”
Despite her terror, Mina almost laughed.
They reached another building two blocks away and emerged into an underground garage.
A black SUV waited.
Minutes later, the city disappeared behind them.
Mina watched Alfred.
He still held the ultrasound.
He had apparently shoved it into his shirt pocket during the escape.
That tiny detail broke something inside her.
“You kept it.”
Alfred looked down.
His expression softened.
“Of course I kept it.”
For several miles neither spoke.
Then Alfred said, “Were you ever going to tell me?”
Mina looked out the window.
“When we were safe.”
“When would that have been?”
“I don't know.”
“A year?”
“Maybe.”
“Five?”
“I don't know.”
He nodded slowly.
“That would've destroyed me.”
Mina turned.
“And losing this baby would destroy me.”
Alfred had no response.
The SUV eventually turned onto a wooded private road.
At the end stood an old stone house.
“My mother's,” Alfred explained.
“I thought she lived in Europe.”
“She does.”
“Who knows about this place?”
“Lev. Me. Nobody else.”
Mina looked at him.
“You're sure?”
Alfred's eyes moved toward Lev.
Lev nodded.
“For tonight.”
Those last two words mattered.
Inside, Alfred checked every room himself.
Mina stood in the kitchen, exhausted.
When he returned, she asked, “What happens now?”
“We find Daniel.”
“And then?”
Alfred didn't answer.
Mina understood what his silence meant.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
“No what?”
“No killing people because of me.”
“Mina, he sold information about you and our child.”
“And if you kill him, someone kills you. Then somebody kills them. Then somebody else comes after our child twenty years from now.”
“This isn't a courtroom.”
“I know exactly what it is.”
She stepped closer.
“And that's why I was leaving.”
Alfred stared at her.
For perhaps the first time in his adult life, someone was asking him not merely to win a war.
She was asking him to end one.
Before he could answer, Lev entered.
“We found Daniel.”
“Where?”
Lev looked grim.
“He's dead.”
Mina's blood chilled.
“Then who called us?”
Lev placed a phone on the table.
“That,” he said, “is the problem.”
May you like
Because Daniel had not been the leak.
Someone much closer to Alfred was.
