Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28 — THE WAR ROOM IN THE WOODS
The standoff ended in a brutal, chaotic firefight. Alexander and Anna managed to escape into the woods with Lily, while Claire fired a distracting volley into Thomas’s vehicles, causing a massive explosion that illuminated the night sky.
By dawn, they were deep in the Adirondack mountains, hiding inside a reinforced underground bunker that Alexander had secretly built years ago during the foundation’s peak success.
Lily was asleep in a small bunk, the red baby shoe resting safely on her chest.
Claire sat at a metal table, cleaning a deep graze on Alexander’s arm. "Thomas saw my face, Alex. He knows I pulled the trigger. The FBI has put out a red alert for both of us. We are officially fugitives."
"Let them look," Alexander grunted. "We have the child. As long as Thomas doesn't have Lily's palm print, he can't access the secondary assets of the Vanguard Group. He’s bleeding money just like we are."
Anna walked into the room, holding a satellite telephone. "We have a problem. Someone just leaked the forensic files Claire stole eight years ago to the public internet."
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Claire frowned. "Why is that a problem? That destroys Thomas!"
"It doesn't destroy Thomas," Anna said, her voice shaking as she handed the phone to Claire. "It destroys us. The leaked files have been altered. They make it look like our father, Claire’s mother, and Eleanor were the ones running the child trafficking and art smuggling ring. The media is calling the Whitmore family the greatest criminal enterprise in American history."
