I was out of the SUV before it fully stopped, running toward the crash site. Evelyn was right behind me. We reachedthe damaged vehicle together, pushing past Flynn to see for ourselves.
Helena Kovacs sat slumped against the driver’s seat, blood trickling from a cut on her forehead. She was maybe fifty, with sharp features and graying blonde hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her white lab coat was spattered with blood from the crash, but her eyes were clear and alert as they tracked our approach.
And she was alone.
The back seat was empty. No child seat, no blanket, no sign that Sophia had ever been in the vehicle.
“Where is she?” Evelyn demanded, voice raw with panic. “Where’s my daughter?”
Kovacs’s thin lips curved in a small, satisfied smile despite her injuries. “Gone,” she said simply. “Well beyond your reach by now.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I grabbed the front of her lab coat, pulling her half out of the seat.
“You think I’d risk the primary asset in a ground transport?” Kovacs asked, actually managing to sound disappointed in our intelligence. “The girl was airlifted out before you even knew she was gone. A helicopter transport to a private airfield thirty miles west of here.” Her smile widened. “The jet took off fifteen minutes ago. By now, she’s in international airspace.”
Evelyn staggered backward as if struck. I felt the world tilting around me, everything I thought I knew crashing down. We’d been chasing a decoy. Wasting precious minutes while Sophia was flown further and further away.
“You’re lying,” I said, but the certainty in Kovacs’s eyes told me she wasn’t.
“Check with your satellite surveillance,” she suggested, seemingly unconcerned with my grip on her coat. “You’ll see I’m right.”
I pressed my earpiece. “Kate, I need confirmation on aircraft departures from all airfields thirty miles west of Garnett.”
The seconds that followed stretched like hours. I still held Kovacs, but my focus had shifted to the comms link, to Kate’s rapid typing in the background. Beside me, Evelyn stood frozen, her face blank with shock.
“Confirming Gulfstream G650 departed private airstrip at 0017 hours,” Kate finally replied, her voice carefully controlled. “Current heading is northwest over Canadian airspace. Flight plan filed for...” She paused, and when she continued, her voice was smaller. “For Helsinki, Finland.”
Finland. International waters. A country with no extradition treaty with the United States for non-violent offenses. And a research facility Innovixus maintained outside Helsinki, according to our intelligence briefs.
Kovacs must have read the realization on my face because she laughed, a small, satisfied sound. “You see? I told you. Beyond your reach.”
I released her coat, letting her fall back against the seat. My hands felt numb. My chest too tight to breathe properly.
We’d lost Sophia. Really lost her.
“No.” Evelyn’s voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. She stood straighter now, something fierce and determined replacing the shock on her face. “No, she is not beyond our reach. Nothing is beyond our reach.” She turned to me, her eyes burning with a fire I’d never seen before. “We’re going after her. Now.”
I stared at her for a moment, her certainty slowly igniting something in my own chest. She was right.
This wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
I leaned into the SUV, my face inches from Kovacs’s. “You can tell your friends to enjoy their head start. Because we’recoming for them and there’s nowhere in the world they can hide.”
CHAPTER 25
TRENT
Three hoursinto our flight to Helsinki, and Evelyn hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken, hadn’t done anything except stare into the blackness beyond the window like she could will it to show her where Sophia was.
Behind us, Flynn slept with his mouth slightly open, head tilted at an angle guaranteed to give him neck pain when he woke up. Lyric sat beside him, her hand resting on his knee, her eyes closed, but her posture reading that she was wide awake.
Gage had passed out two rows back, his face turned toward the wall, one hand clenched even in sleep.
Alistair sat across from him, pale as death, his shirt still stained with blood despite Nolan’s field dressing. The bullet had taken a chunk out of him, but hadn’t hit anything vital. Still, he’d lost enough blood to make him look like a corpse.
Decker and Leo occupied the rear seats, both with their eyes closed but bodies tense. Rafe had his eyes shut too, but the tension in his jaw told me he was just resting, not sleeping.
