Chapter 2

Kennard's cold fingers clamped around Katherine's jaw.

He forced her head to the side, his thumb pressing bruisingly hard into the skin behind her ear. He was searching for surgical scars, for the telltale signs of a scalpel that would prove this was just another sick game.

Finding nothing but a faint, pinkish trace where blisters should have been raging-healed far too quickly to be natural-his breath caught for a fraction of a second before his paranoia swallowed the observation whole. His gaze dropped to her left arm. He snatched her wrist with a sudden, violent jerk, pulling it up between them. His thumb dug ruthlessly into the exact spot where the deep, jagged burn scar should have been-the scar that had defined his mother's sacrifice for twelve years. His thumb met only smooth, unblemished flesh. The absence of the mark didn't relieve him; it enraged him. His pulse hammered against his own ribs as a dark, paranoid fury clouded his eyes. "You even had the scar surgically removed and grafted?" he snarled, his grip tightening until her bones ground together.

Katherine did not fight him.

She let him twist her face, her eyes remaining fixed on his. She did not show the frantic, hysterical fear that Brittnie always used when caught in a lie. Her gaze was completely still, heavy with a suffocating, maternal pity.

Kennard's breathing hitched. His fingers twitched against her skin. The absolute calm in her eyes was wrong. It terrified him.

Katherine swallowed hard, forcing moisture into her smoke-ravaged throat.

"The moon is hiding in the grandfather clock."

The words came out as a raspy whisper.

Kennard's hand snapped back as if he had been electrocuted. He stumbled backward, his shoulder slamming hard into the heavy bumper of a fire truck. He grabbed his own hair, his fingers digging into his scalp.

"No," he muttered, his chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow jerks. "No, she told you. Brittnie told you that. She read my journals."

Katherine took a step toward him, her hand extended-her weight shifting awkwardly, favoring her uninjured leg.

"Don't touch me!" he bellowed, his eyes bloodshot and wild. "You think some cheap psychological parlor trick is going to work on me? You think I don't know what this is?"

A paramedic finally broke the tension, stepping between them to drape a foil thermal blanket over Katherine's shoulders. The medic reached for her bleeding arm, but Katherine kept her eyes locked on her son. Kennard stared back, looking at her like she was a biological weapon.

A California Highway Patrol officer approached Kennard, holding a notepad.

Kennard's posture instantly shifted. The frantic, broken boy vanished, replaced by the cold, untouchable heir to the Blackburn empire. He reached into his ruined jacket, pulled out a soot-stained business card, and shoved it against the officer's chest.

"My lawyers will handle the statement," Kennard said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.

He turned on his heel and strode toward a black Cadillac Escalade SUV that had just pulled up to the perimeter. He yanked the heavy armored door open, then looked back at Katherine.

"Get in the car," he ordered.

Katherine pulled the thermal blanket tighter around her shoulders. She walked past the stunned police officers and paramedics, her steps measured and calm-though her right knee protested with each step, forcing a subtle, carefully masked limp. She climbed into the back seat of the mobile fortress, pulling herself up with her arms to spare her injured leg.

Kennard got in beside her. He hit a button on the console. A thick, soundproof glass partition slid up, sealing them off from the driver. He didn't do it blindly. His right hand dropped to his side, resting casually but purposefully over the concealed panic button embedded in the leather armrest, while his eyes flicked to the cabin's discreet security camera, its faint red light confirming they were being monitored by his armed escort.

The SUV accelerated, leaving the burning wreckage behind, merging onto the Pacific Coast Highway toward Beverly Hills.

The silence inside the cabin was suffocating.

Kennard sat pressed against the far door, putting as much physical distance between them as possible. He poured a glass of whiskey from the built-in decanter. His knuckles were white as bone around the crystal glass.

Katherine watched him in the passing glow of the streetlights. His shoulders were rigid under the ruined suit. The dark, bruised circles under his eyes spoke of years of sleep deprivation.

"Latitude 34.092, Longitude negative 118.401."

Katherine spoke the numbers clearly into the quiet car.

The whiskey sloshed over the rim of Kennard's glass, staining the cashmere floor mat. He snapped his head toward her, his jaw ticking so hard she could hear his teeth grinding.

"The treehouse behind the old estate," Katherine continued, her voice steady. "Where you hid when the thunder got too loud. You never wrote those coordinates down. You only whispered them to me."

Kennard lunged across the seat.

He grabbed the lapels of her coat and shoved her back against the reinforced window. The glass was cold against her skull. His face was inches from hers, his breath smelling of alcohol and ash.

"Who sent you?" he demanded, a vein pulsing violently in his neck. "What firm? What corporate espionage unit? Give me a name and I'll let you live."

Katherine did not blink. She looked straight into his fractured eyes.

"I crawled out of a cold grave to take my family back, Kennard."

A visible tremor ran through his arms. The script in his head was screaming at him to kill her, to protect Brittnie's narrative, but the physical reality of her voice was tearing the code apart. He bit down on his lower lip until a drop of blood welled up, using the pain to anchor himself.

He shoved off her and collapsed back into his seat.

He pulled his phone from his pocket. His thumb smeared soot across the screen as he dialed a number.

"Prep the lab," Kennard said into the phone, his voice hollow. "I need your best DNA sequencing equipment ready. Top clearance."

He hung up and threw the phone onto the seat.

Katherine calmly adjusted her collar. She smoothed the wrinkles from her coat and offered him a small, chilling smile.

"I am more than happy to bleed for you."

The SUV turned off the highway, winding up the private mountain roads of Beverly Hills. They passed through three heavily armed security checkpoints before the massive wrought-iron gates of the Blackburn estate swung open.

The gothic-modern mansion loomed in the darkness.

The car stopped at the front fountain. Dusty Schultz, Kennard's executive assistant, stood on the marble steps flanked by two security contractors.

Kennard pushed his door open and stepped out into the cold air. He did not look back.

"Put her in the third-floor guest suite," Kennard ordered the guards. "Lock it down."

Katherine stepped out of the SUV, her jaw tightening as her right knee took her weight. The two former Navy SEALs moved to grab her arms. Katherine turned her head and leveled a stare at them that was so heavy, so saturated with absolute authority, that both men physically halted.

Dusty Schultz stood at the top of the stairs, holding a tablet. He looked down at the woman stepping out of the car.

His mouth fell open.

The tablet slipped from his fingers. It hit the marble steps with a sharp crack, the screen shattering into pieces.

Kennard ignored the sound. He walked into the mansion, his back rigid, leaving Katherine standing in the night air, staring up at the prison she had built twelve years ago.