Painter was on the phone with the National Guard, ordering a series of EMP devices to be set off to destroy any stragglers. But his first call was to the president, to report the safe recovery of his grandson, William. So, mountains were already being moved to reconcile what had happened.
But some matters were harder to resolve.
Seichan sat in the copilot’s seat, quiet, still processing all she’d learned. The body blow of discovering her father’s identity still showed in her face, in the haunted look in her eyes.
He reached over to her, palm up.
She took it.
They had fled from the castle following the thermobaric explosion in the vaults under the Lodge. In the confusion, they’d commandeered the helicopter, the same chopper that had delivered him here. Gray had contacted Sigma command and got patched through to Painter, only to learn that the director was here—and safe.
Glad to escape, Gray swung the helicopter over the steaming sinkhole. It was rapidly filling with water, quickly growing into a new lake. As he swept across it, he saw something climb out of a tunnel halfway down the sinkhole wall. It was the size of a large tank. It pushed free, like a spider creeping out of a nest, scrabbling at the walls, trailing wires, sections of its carapace missing, some half-completed monstrosity driven by the will to live, to survive.
It emerged into the sunlight, basking in its momentary life.
Then it lost its footing and tumbled into the roiling morass below.
42
July 4, 4:10 P.M. EST
Airborne
The jet screamed through the skies on the way back to DC.
Gray sat apart from the others. Each had finished telling sketchy versions of their story, of what they learned, piecing together a tale of immortality, ancient lineages, and modern weapons research. But the more the story unfolded, the less Gray felt at ease.
Seichan slid into the neighboring seat, already more herself, ever resilient, though he could still see the shadowed cast to her eyes, even if no one else could. He noted, during the debriefing, that she never mentioned the one significant revelation tied to the discovery of her long-lost father: that her mother might still be alive.
For now, she wanted to hold that detail close to her heart, and he let her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, leaning against him.
“I think we’re still missing something.” He shook his head, not knowing how to put this into words. “Something feels … incomplete.”
“Then figure it out. That’s your job, isn’t it? To put pieces together that don’t fit—but actually do.”
Easier said than done.
And maybe this time the pieces didn’t fit.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, sighing deeply. Her head touched his shoulder. Somehow his hand was back in hers, his thumb gently brushing the tenderness of her inner wrist. They’d never said the words to bring them to this place, but both knew it to be right.
These pieces fit.
He was relaxed, content for the first time in months, more at peace—and things fell perfectly into place in his head, fully formed as if they’d always been there.
He jolted upright in his seat.
Seichan stared up at him. “What?”
“The Jewish tradition. Robert told me about it. We’ve been wrong all along. It’s not the Gants … it never was the Gants.”
He stood up, drawing Seichan with him. He hurried over to Painter, who was working on his laptop.
Gray slid next to him. “Can you bring up that Gant family tree that you showed us earlier? And I’ll need Jason Carter’s help to check something.”
Painter nodded, not asking why, knowing this was Gray’s wheelhouse.
The others gathered closer.
In a few seconds, the schematic bloomed again on the screen, detailing the rich lineage of the Gant family. The map was done up as data points, detailing every branch, twig, stem, stalk, root, and tendril of that family tree. The central mass, the densest cluster of data, represented those that carried the actual Gant name.
But Gray wasn’t interested in them.
Painter spoke: “Here’s Jason.”
The analyst’s voice rose from the laptop’s internal speakers. “How can I help, Commander Pierce?”
“I need you to zoom down and show me the outer edges of the family tree.”
“Got it.”
The schematic swelled and swept into the outer spiral arms of the galaxy, to that hazy fog of genetic trails at its edges, made up of lines that spun out and then back in again. Over and over. Threading a weave at the edge of the Gant clan. Those arcing curves delineated where stray members of the family abandoned the main clan, carried other names for a few generations, until some future offspring ended up remarrying back into the family.
Painter had called these extraneous lines outliers, the outlying part of the family tree, those living at a distance.
“What are you looking for?” Painter asked.
“You mentioned you suspected a pattern out here, something you could sense but not grasp.”
“Yes, but why does it matter now? Robert is dead. We can clean things up from here.”
“Robert’s not the problem—he never was. He thought he was a king, or at least a high-ranked lieutenant, but in the end, he was a puppet as surely as anyone else. Used by the Bloodline until they cut his strings.”
Gray realized something else in that moment, his mind filling in those final pieces. “I think Robert was already chafing against those unknown puppet masters. I believe he was the one who sent that note to Amanda to run.”
He remembered Robert’s last words.
No father should lose a daughter …
He was talking about the president as much as himself. Robert knew what a personal hell it was to lose a daughter. He could not let his brother suffer the same fate, so he tried to protect Amanda.
“Then what are you thinking?” Painter asked.
He pointed to the screen. “You were right, there is a pattern here. But we were all looking for a pattern with biased eyes, from a patriarchal viewpoint, where lineage is determined by the male offspring, where boys carry on their fathers’ names. That’s what is mapped here.”
“Okay.”
“But there’s a mirror to this, another way of looking at a family’s genetic roots. Robert mentioned how the Bloodline traced its roots to the clans that were cast out by Moses. True or not, he said they still kept certain Jewish traditions alive.”
Gray twisted and pointed to Lisa. “You mentioned how the triple helices could only pass down a female lineage. From egg to egg to egg, due to the cytoplasmic nature of the PNA strand.”
She nodded.
“That’s why they cast aside all other paths to immortality and concentrated solely on this one. It had a direct correlation to the images on the staff of Christ, but also because it fit what they wanted. A trait that matched their traditions and goals.”
“Which was what?” Painter asked.
Gray pointed to the screen. “The mirror image to a patriarchal view of heredity is a matriarchal one. According to the Mishnah, the oldest codification of Jewish tradition, you must be the child of a Jewish mother to be considered Jewish. The father doesn’t matter. The Jewish heritage is passed only through a woman’s bloodlines.”
But Gray needed proof. “Jason, can you separate out the two genders on this map? Tagging which are males, which are females.”
“Easy. The data is already in place … let me plot in the algorithm.” Then a few seconds later, he returned. “Here are the male lines of the family.”
As they all watched, blue lines sprang to life and illuminated that genetic galaxy—but a clear pattern appeared. Most of the blue threads remained tangled and clustered down the center, only a few coursed into the outlier sections, that hazy edge of the family.
“Now the female bloodline,” Gray said.
The blue fire vanished, and crimson lines b
lossomed. The outer fog around the central clan lit up with a rosy glow, a crimson cloud of heritage wrapped around the Gant clan.
A small gasp rose from Painter. “Almost all of these outlier lines are women.”
Gray stared closer and traced one of those crimson lines. “A woman leaves the Gant clan—and, in a handful of generations, it’s a woman who returns to marry back into the fold. Seldom a man.” He had another idea. “Jason, can you tag only the outlier lines, see how deeply they mesh with the main Gant clan?”
“Give me a few … done. Here you go.”
On the screen, everything fell away, except for the crimson haze at the edges. Another pattern became clear. Only a few of the red lines ever delved deeply into the main genealogical center. They only stayed for a generation or two—then darted back out again.
Painter saw it, too. “It’s like they’re sticking their toe in the gene pool, then pulling it back out again.” He turned to Gray, realization dawning in his eyes. “They’re like parasites on the Gant family. Bloodsucking flies. They hover near the well of the Gant wealth and power, tap into it regularly, feeding off it to sustain themselves, but mostly they live apart.”
The very definition of outlier.
Painter pointed to the screen. “This is not chance. This was done purposefully. A breeding plan to sustain a female lineage.”
“But why?” Lisa asked behind them.
Gray answered, “It’s likely the only way they can sustain such a lineage, to keep it from fraying away in a world where wealth is passed down to the first son, where most power has been wielded by men. To survive in that world, they adapted. They became parasites on specific families. Remember, the Bloodline once involved more than just the Gants. They performed this same dance with five or six wealthy European clans. Likely these parasitic flies traveled between these various families to better hide themselves.”
“They didn’t want to keep all their eggs in one basket,” Monk said.
Gray agreed. “But over time, those other families died away, ground under the march of time, until only the Gant family was left. We know in the past the Bloodline has tried to recruit new families, but in this modern age, where it’s not easy to hide and where family wealth often comes and goes in a couple of generations, they’ve only met with failure.”
Painter leaned back in his seat, looking paler. “Leaving them with the Gants.”
“Where they’re circling the drain, likely knowing it’s become unsustainable. I believe that’s the purpose of those experiments. They were seeking ways to keep their lineage alive, to extend it and give it permanence.”
Lisa spoke, her voice hushed with shock. “That’s why they went with the triple-helix plan. A triple helix can only pass down a matriarchal line. And they came so close to succeeding.”
“I think that success—along with the pressure Sigma was putting on them—gave them the push to strike out with a masterful endgame, one final move to ensure their power for generations on end.”
“The assassination plot,” Painter said.
“And the murder of Robert. The Lineage was done nibbling at the edges. They wanted to consume the Gants whole, to take over the family completely, to fully access their wealth and power.”
“But they failed.”
“And because of that we need to be scared,” Gray warned. “This Lineage has survived centuries, living in the empty spaces between other families, doing what they must to survive, shedding their humanity.”
“And they’re skilled at it,” Seichan added, likely picturing Petra. “They won’t succumb quietly. They will leave a wake of destruction behind them. Not out of vengeance—they’re too cold and calculating for that. They’ll do it because it will serve them in the long run. To cover their escape.”
“But how do we find them?” Painter asked.
Gray nodded to those crimson lines. “We start there. They don’t know we are aware of this.” He waved a hand to the trail of red lines. “We start plucking threads—and hopefully the rest will unravel.”
“There might be a way to find which threads are the best to pull.” Painter leaned toward the laptop’s microphone. “Jason, is there a way to examine those outlier lines and determine which ones lead the farthest back? In other words, which have the richest genetic heritage?”
“That’ll take a little more time.”
Painter turned to Gray. “From those massive databases you saw at the Lodge, heredity was important to them. What if the Bloodline links power to genetic heritage? The richer your heritage, the more authority you wield. If we can trace those lines of power—”
“Done,” Jason said. “You should see certain lines growing fatter on the screen, indicating stronger hereditary weight.”
On the screen, the uniformity of the crimson threads slowly altered—some growing fainter, others more prominent.
Once the process finished, Painter asked Jason to pick the thickest line and trail it down to modern times. It should point to the power brokers of this generation.
On the screen, a small cursor ran down that fat pipe and stopped at a single name at the end. It glowed brightly on the screen for all to see.
“Fuck me,” Kowalski swore, voicing all of their sentiments.
Gray remembered the digitally masked voice on the radio, ordering the assassination. Here was the person who had been manipulating events all along. The Bloodline wasn’t planning for Robert to take the grief of a wounded nation and turn it into a presidential bid.
Another would.
Her name shone on that screen.
Teresa Melody Gant
It would be the grieving widow who would tug at the heartstrings of the country and assume her dead husband’s mantle.
But that wasn’t the worst news.
“Director,” Jason said, “she’s here. The First Lady arrived five minutes ago with her Secret Service detachment.”
“What?”
“The president called her. He’s due in an hour to come out of hiding. He wanted his wife to hear about his survival first, to hear it from him, but also to share the good news about Amanda and the baby.”
“Where is she?”
“Down with them now, sir. And her Secret Service detachment—they’re all women. I should—”
Faint pops of gunfire cut him off.
4:55 P.M.
Washington, DC
At the foot of their daughter’s hospital bed, President James T. Gant hugged his wife, balanced between grief and joy, mourning the loss of his brother but relieved to hear his grandson was alive and safe.
The loud blasts of pistols out in the hallway jerked him out of Teresa’s arms.
What the hell?
He was alone in the room with his wife and sleeping child. He had pushed his own Secret Service agent outside to give the family this private moment together.
He realized his mistake—from the black SIG Sauer in his wife’s hand pointed at his chest.
“Teresa …?”
He searched her face and knew at that moment that the woman standing before him was not his wife. She wore the same face, but she was not the same woman. A mask had fallen away, hardening her eyes to a cold polish. Even her facial features seemed subtly different, becoming a wax version of the warm girl who’d won his heart.
She stood at the foot of Amanda’s bed in a protective pose. “Jimmy,” she said, her voice equally changed, flat and affectless, indicating how much of a consummate actress she had been. “You’ve ruined everything.”
He realized the truth at that moment. “You’re a part of the Bloodline. Like my brother.”
“Robert was nothing. He was ignorant of my involvement. Only a useful tool to hide behind. Nothing more. The Lineage will survive. We always do. It is our birthright. Born from exiles cast out into the desert wilderness—we still survive.”
He stood, stunned.
“And we have not lost everything. You’ve given us Amanda. Willful and unpredictable, she is unfit
for the Lineage, but she is still clearly blessed. We failed with her first child, but she will give us more until we find that special female child, the one who will lead us out of the wilderness once again, more powerful than ever.”
He took a step forward, realizing they were planning on taking Amanda. He pictured the women floating in the tanks.
Teresa backed to the edge of the bed, never letting down her guard. “But first, to open a path back into the wilderness where we can hide”—she pointed her pistol at his face—“we need chaos.”
Like a dead president.
“Good-bye, Jimmy.”
“Good-bye, Teresa.”
He flinched back as Amanda—seated in her bed behind Teresa—swung the IV pole and clubbed the weighted bottom into the side of his wife’s head.
Bone cracked and blood burst out of her nose.
She fell with a momentary look of bewilderment.
Her first real emotion since she pulled the gun.
Jimmy went for the weapon, realizing that the gunfire had ended out in the hallway. He started to bend—when the door crashed open.
Turning, he prayed it was his own Secret Service detail, that they had survived the ambush.
This was not his day.
Two women in uniform burst inside, weapons pointed.
Teresa’s detail.
They froze, seeing Teresa on the floor, unmoving.
Out in the hallway behind them, a small figure slid past the door on his knees along the blood-slicked floor. He had a pistol pointed.
Two pops.
Two clean shots to the back of the women’s heads.
Then he slid out of view.
Amanda still sat on her bed, holding the IV pole. “Who was that?”
Jimmy pictured the face of the young man, the analyst from before. He couldn’t remember his name, but he knew one thing about the boy.
“That was my new best friend.”
43
July 12, 10:10 A.M. EST
Washington, DC
Painter stood at the foot of Amanda’s bed at George Washington University Hospital. He had his arm around Lisa’s waist as she reviewed the young woman’s chart. Mother and child had been here for a week, transferred shortly after the revelation of the president’s miraculous recovery following the assassination attempt.
Bloodline: A Sigma Force Novel Page 42