Chapter 304

Siron looked down at Baker, bound to the chair and unable to budge, with a confused gaze. After the first seizure, he’d clung harder to his calling—like a terminal patient scraping together the dregs of what little life remained and hurling them at one last task.

And the phrase first seizure sounded as if it referred to an Alpha’s seizure. Siron had once watched Isaac seize. He remembered that strong body collapsing without defense, wracked and helpless in pain. He asked:

“Jackson Cliff isn’t the Designer?”

At Siron’s question, Baker’s face went blank. He looked like a man blindsided by something he hadn’t remotely expected. His lips worked, unable to find a proper answer; only after a short breath did he reply:

“I have nothing to tell you. Don’t ask further.”

Baker set his jaw and shut his mouth.

“Why? Who is it that you won’t say?”

“......”

“The Designer isn’t Jackson Cliff?”

“......”

“Or is it someone I know?”

Baker answered none of Siron’s questions. Threats and coaxing in turn moved nothing, and at last Siron turned away. He could not afford to linger here. He opened the door carefully and slipped into the corridor like a mouse, killing his sound.

Long after, Baker—left alone in the lab—stared anxiously at the closed door and muttered to himself:

“There’s CCTV in the corridor. I should at least have told him that.”

I’ve issued a ticket for you.

October 17, 11:00 p.m.

John F. Kennedy International Airport, Terminal 4, Main Hall.

I’ll wait for you and Joshua on the bench to the left of the Swiss Airlines counter information desk.

Hannah stared at the photo saved in her phone. It was the message someone unknown had left on the laptop meant for her daughter Angela. But because Hannah had intercepted it, the laptop had never reached her daughter and now sat in her own hands.

On the days Angela left for work, Hannah had studied how to use the wallet.dat file on the laptop. At last she learned that each of the five wallet.dat files held roughly 120,000 DeepCoins.

When she’d checked the ever-shifting price of DeepCoin for the last time that morning, the price per coin was 51.7 dollars. With the total count in the laptop at about 600,000 coins, that translated to a value of nearly 31 million dollars. In Korean money, close to forty billion won.

He’s planning a crime and a getaway. He means to use my daughter as the mule for that money.

The man had persuaded Angela to have Joshua, and that wasn’t enough—he was trying to make mother and child flee to Switzerland. With a laptop stuffed with hundreds of thousands of deeply suspicious cryptocurrency coins.

Hannah’s husband Malcolm was a close-mouthed man, but sometimes he would relay a story about an inmate in the prison—usually when he wanted to warn Hannah about the dangers of the outside world. A young man who’d slaughtered several people over a dented pride at a ten-dollar loss and earned life without parole—stories like that, and others where some petty quarrel had spiraled into irreparable tragedy.

If the cryptocurrency on the laptop meant for her daughter was tied to crime, and if the man intended to smuggle the money out and run with her daughter—then not only the lives of her grandchildren and Angela but Malcolm’s and Hannah’s own would be dragged into danger.

A surge of anxiety struck her; she smoothed the bag on her knees with care. Inside was the laptop she meant to return to the unknown man.

The time was 10:57 p.m. Not even three minutes remained until the appointed hour. She lifted her head and scanned the surroundings of the rendezvous point. The area around the Swiss Airlines counter, with its white cross logo on red, was packed with people waiting to check in.

Pulling her hat low and sweeping the benches with a sharp gaze for the men nearby, Hannah caught sight of a silver-haired man with a striking air.

With an actor’s carriage, he came off the escalator at a quick clip and strode into the plaza by the airline counter, trench coat flaring.

The instant Hannah saw him, her heart dropped. Though he was a complete stranger, she knew at once he was her grandson’s biological father—the man who had shaken Angela.

“Anemone’s flower language is the duality of hope and forsaking. I don’t know how I’m supposed to treat a man who brings that on a first date.”

Remembering her daughter’s face, shadowed and troubled as she said it, Hannah felt tears leap up.

Angela. You’ve lost your mind.

The man had a handsome, actorly aura, but he looked easily twenty years older than Angela. Hannah could not fathom what her brilliant daughter lacked that she’d let herself be swept by a man who looked well past fifty, borne his child, and even tried to leave her parents to step into danger.

The man scanned the benches by the counter in growing agitation, then checked his watch. Even after the clock had ticked past 11:00 sharp, whoever he sought was nowhere near the benches; his face paled, shade by shade.

Hannah lifted the laptop bag from her knees with a trembling hand. She meant to return the laptop holding cryptocurrency of a value far beyond what their family could bear. She meant to warn him not to drag her daughter and grandson into needless danger—to stay out of her daughter’s life.

Resolved, she stood with the laptop and walked straight for him like a bulldozer. She was less than ten meters away, shaping his name to call out, when two tall young men suddenly swept past from behind and closed in around him.

“Mr. Cliff. We’ve been waiting. You’ll need to come with us.”

Hannah couldn’t see the face of the man they called Cliff—screened by the bulk of the two men like a human wall. In the airport’s bustle and noise, a hush seemed to fall over just that patch of air, as if someone had muted it. Within that hush, Cliff’s low reply carried clearly.

To avoid drawing needless attention from the men, Hannah angled naturally toward the airline’s check-in counters. She walked slowly beyond the partitioned belt guide, watching them out of the corner of her eye. The men surrounding Cliff wore short-sleeved T-shirts—clothes ill-suited to New York’s cool autumn weather.

“You were waiting for me? Why?”

Cliff asked it with a courteous smile, as if embarrassed.

“Do I have something urgent that can’t wait another minute?”

The men said nothing.

“I told my secretary I had a meeting with a member of the House. It’s a morning appointment, so I’d like to go back to the hotel and rest.”

Still silence.

“I’m tired. Go on. I’ll return when my schedule permits.”

“Let’s go.”

At last the younger of the two spoke, reaching a hand to Cliff’s shoulder.

“The Designer is waiting.”

Walking very slowly along the guide line, Hannah knit her brow at the word that pierced her ear. The Designer is waiting? Was Cliff in construction?

“If he suddenly wants me, why? Did he have a rough night’s dream?”

When Cliff raised his voice, the man on his right said:

“Please don’t draw attention.”

“And if I refuse to go?”

“As you well know, ‘refuse to go’ is not an available option.”

Cliff let out a dry laugh and carefully checked his surroundings, as if to mark his exit routes. In that instant, he spotted Hannah. The deep-socketed eyes locked, flinching tight. Even with her hat pulled low, Cliff seemed to recognize her as Angela’s mother.

Frightened by the shock in his face, Hannah forgot her resolve to return the laptop and hurried her steps. She joined the line at the check-in counter well away from them and didn’t dare look back. Her heart pounded; blood raced through her body.

Only after a long moment did she risk turning her head for a look. By then, time had already passed. And where she looked—Cliff and the men were gone.