Chapter 2 - The Sound of the Chopper
The cold was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest like a sheet of lead, but somewhere in the hazy darkness of unconsciousness, a deep, rhythmic thrumming began to vibrate through the frozen stone beneath me.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
It was the heavy chop of rotor blades cutting through the bitter mountain air.
I gasped, my eyes flying open as a rush of burning oxygen hit my lungs. I was still lying beside the pool, but the freezing water had stopped pouring over me; Diego had turned the valve off in his blind panic. My sweater felt like a block of ice frozen to my skin, and sharp, agonizing contractions rippled across my lower abdomen. The babies—my twins—kicked frantically, a desperate flurry of movement inside my womb.
"Hold on, little ones," I whispered through blue, chattering lips, curling into a tight ball against the frost.
Across the patio, Diego was beating his fists against the glass of the locked sliding kitchen door. "Mom! Mom, open the door!" he shouted, his voice cracking with hysteria.
Brenna appeared behind the glass, her face pale with shock, her hands trembling as she tried to force the manual latch from the inside. But Alvin’s remote override had frozen the digital actuators entirely. They were trapped inside their own fortress of luxury.
Then, a massive twin-engine medical helicopter crested the tree line behind the retreat, its high-intensity searchlight cutting through the pine trees and flooding the patio in a blinding wash of white light. The wind from the rotors whipped the snow and ice into a furious blizzard across the stone.
Diego shielded his eyes, stumbling backward as the chopper’s landing skids hovered just feet above the upper lawn.
The side door slid open with a sharp click. Two heavily armed private security operatives wearing Sterling Corp insignia dropped smoothly to the ground, followed by a frantic trauma medic carrying an insulated thermal kit.
I saw the familiar silver insignia on their jackets, and the last of my strength finally gave out.
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"Get her inside—now!" a voice bellowed through the wind. It wasn't one of the guards on the ground. It was the frantic, amplified voice of my father coming through the helicopter’s external comm-link from forty miles away.
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