The words land like ice water.
My daughter. My six-year-old little girl with her stegosaurus collection, her purple coat, and her brave little voice on the phone sayingI'm better now, Daddy.
She's not better.
She's carrying a monster in her blood.
Killing this woman doesn't change that. Doesn't undo it. Doesn't do anything except eliminate the only person who might be able to help me find out how to save her.
The math is obscene.
I lower the weapon.
Something in my back teeth grinds flat and stays there.
"You're going to save her." The words have the absolute weight of an order to execute—not a question, not a request, not a hope. A fact I am making true by force of will. "You're going to reconstruct every transaction, trace every clinic, identify every patient who might be carrying this thing. And if my daughter dies—if anything happens to her because of what you built …"
I don't finish the sentence.
I don't need to.
"I understand." Julianna's nod is barely visible, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"You don't." The hollow words scratch at my throat. "But you will."
I step back. Holster the weapon. Don't take my eyes off her.
The room exhales.
Sarah turns to her father. He's been silent through the whole exchange, watching with eyes that have gone flat and calculating. Something's changed in his expression—the defeat giving way to something else. Something I should be tracking but can't because my head is full of Lily's voice and the sound of a bell ringing in a hospital corridor.
Vance suddenly moves.
Fast. Faster than a man his age should be able to move. He lunges for my weapon.
I react.
Two shots.
Center mass.
Senator Marcus Vance staggers back. Looks down at his chest. Two holes, spreading red across his white shirt.
He looks at Sarah.
"I would have given you the world." The whisper is a dying rattle in his throat.
Then he falls.
The silence that follows is absolute.
I lower my weapon for the second time in five minutes. Look at Sarah. She's staring at her father's body with an expression I can't read—not grief, not relief. Something that doesn't have a name.
"He was going for my weapon."
"I know." Sarah's voice is quiet. Steady.
She doesn't look away from the body.
