Chapter 8: The Fall
“The brakes!”
Dante sprinted across the roof.
Mara followed.
The end of the bridge rushed toward them.
One hundred yards.
Eighty.
Sixty.
The locomotive screamed.
Dante dropped through the emergency hatch into the engine car.
The controls were dead.
Wires had been cut.
A timer blinked on the dashboard.
00:27
“Bomb!”
Mara ripped open the floor panel.
Explosives were wired directly into the brake system.
“Can you stop it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have twenty seconds.”
She stared at the wires.
Her hands moved before she could think.
Blue.
Black.
Red.
She knew the sequence.
“How?”
“I don’t know!”
She cut the blue wire.
The timer accelerated.
00:14
“Wrong one!”
Dante grabbed the emergency brake lever.
It wouldn’t move.
Locked.
He fired into the mechanism.
Nothing.
Mara looked at the detonator again.
A symbol was carved into the casing.
Winged lion.
Then it hit her.
She closed her eyes.
A flash.
A room.
A man in a military uniform.
A child’s voice.
Never cut blue first.
She sliced the black wire.
The timer stopped.
00:03
The bomb died.
But the train didn’t.
The tracks disappeared ahead.
“Jump!”
Dante kicked open the side door.
They leaped.
The locomotive shot off the unfinished bridge.
The explosion lit up the river below.
The shockwave threw them across the rocks.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then Mara sat up.
Dante was gone.
“Dante!”
She stumbled through smoke and burning wreckage.
A hand grabbed her ankle.
Dante.
Alive.
Barely.
Before she could pull him free, headlights flooded the riverbank.
Black SUVs.
At least twelve.
Armed men surrounded them.
Marco stepped out.
Applauding slowly.
“You survived.”
Dante raised a pistol.
Empty.
Marco smiled.
“You’re out of bullets.”
He looked at Mara.
“You disarmed the bomb exactly the way Bellori children were trained.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were six years old when they started.”
He tossed a folder onto the ground.
Medical files.
Training reports.
Psychological evaluations.
One page bore Mara’s photograph.
Subject: LUCIA BELLORI
Status: Primary Asset
Mara stared at the file.
“No.”
Marco looked almost sympathetic.
“You weren’t raised.”
He took a step closer.
“You were engineered.”
Dante pulled himself up.
“Stay behind me.”
Marco laughed.
“She doesn’t need protection.”
He pulled out a tablet.
Pressed play.
A video appeared.
A little girl fought three grown men in a training room.
She was small.
Terrified.
Fast.
Unbelievably fast.
The girl turned toward the camera.
It was Mara.
She looked at the screen.
Then at her own hands.
Fragments slammed into her mind.
The fountain.
The fire.
The old woman.
The winged lion.
And a voice she had forgotten.
You are the last Bellori.
Mara staggered backward.
Marco watched her carefully.
“Do you remember now?”
She whispered one word.
“Father.”
Marco’s smile disappeared.
“You remember him?”
She looked straight at him.
“No.”
She looked past him.
At the woman standing beside the SUVs.
Celeste.
Holding a child by the arm.
The same boy Mara had saved at the gala.
A gun was pressed against the child’s head.
Celeste smiled.
“Drop the keys.”
The boy looked at Mara.
His eyes were full of tears.
May you like
Then he whispered,
“Don’t give them the third key.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(1048x378:1050x380)/Jenna-Bush-Hager-100223-c94955eb572d47ea815a340c18c6e771.jpg)
