Chapter 7 - The Unbroken Ring“Stay down!” I shouted, pushing Claire gently back onto the bed and pulling a heavy wooden dresser in front of the door.

Dr. Flores hid in the adjoining bathroom while I drew a handgun Marcus had provided earlier. The heavy silence of the dark house was broken only by the sound of rain pounding on the roof and the muffled pop of suppressed gunfire from the courtyard below.

Titan Security mercenaries had found us.

Marcus engaged the intruders in the lower hallway, the flash of muzzle fire illuminating the grand staircase in blinding bursts.

“Daniel! Take Claire to the boat dock behind the house!” Marcus yelled over the radio. “I’ll draw their fire!”

“I’m not leaving you behind, Marcus!”

“If they get that microchip, everyone dies anyway! Go!”

I hauled Claire up, supporting her weight around my waist. We navigated the dark corridors of the second floor, down the back service stairs, and out into the drenched rear patio. The tropical rain stung my skin like needles.

At the end of the wooden dock floated Marcus’s high-speed center-console boat.

As we reached the edge of the dock, a bright tactical flashlight cut through the darkness, blinding us.

“End of the line, Mr. Carter.”

A man stepped out from the shadows of the palm trees. He wore a long dark trench coat over a sharp suit, holding a silenced pistol pointed directly at my chest.

It was Richard Vance. Beside him stood two heavily armed mercenaries holding assault rifles.

“Richard,” Claire gasped, shielding her stomach with her hands.

“Claire, you really have been a persistent thorn in my side,” Richard said smoothly, his voice dripping with condescending disdain. “All you had to do was let the pregnancy fail quietly in Atlanta. But you had to run to Miami. You had to involve your washed-up ex-husband.”

“You're a monster,” I spat, stepping in front of Claire. “You’re testing lethal drugs on innocent mothers.”

“Innocent mothers?” Richard laughed coldly. “We are engineering the future of human biology, Daniel! A multi-billion-dollar government contract that will eradicate genetic disease forever. A few failed pregnancies are merely acceptable collateral damage in the grand scheme of human evolution.”

Richard leveled his gun at my head. “Give me the ring and the drive, Daniel. And maybe I’ll let you watch her die quickly.”

I reached slowly into my pocket, keeping my fingers wrapped around the butt of my pistol.

“You want the ring?” I said, staring into his eyes. “Here.”

Instead of pulling out the ring, I drew my gun and fired three rapid shots into the wooden dock at his feet.

The unexpected gunfire shattered the wet planks, spraying splinters into the eyes of the two mercenaries. Richard ducked in panic.

In that split second of chaos, I tackled the nearest security guard, shoving him off the slippery dock into the churned, dark waters of Biscayne Bay. I snatched his rifle as he fell, spun around, and fired a burst into the engine block of their parked getaway boat.

“Claire, jump!” I yelled.

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Claire scrambled into Marcus’s boat. I jumped onto the deck, cast off the thick dock lines, and slammed the twin 400-horsepower throttles forward.

The boat roared to life, its propellers tearing through the water as we rocketed out into the black, stormy expanse of the open ocean, leaving Richard Vance screaming in rage on the burning dock behind us.