CHAPTER 10
GAbrIEL
◆
The first vehicle carried federal plates.
The second did not.
I counted five in the convoy before the trees hid the road. Too many for an arrest. Too coordinated for panic.
Helena stepped into her dress behind me, moving fast without becoming frantic. The black silk was wrinkled, her hair wild, her mouth red from mine. The sight hit me with a primitive, useless satisfaction.
Then she put on her shoes and became the woman the government wanted to cage.
“How long?” she asked.
“Four minutes.”
“To do what?”
“Leave.”
“This house has one road.”
“It has one visible road.”
I opened the wardrobe and pressed the back panel. A narrow passage led to the original servants’ stair. My mother had built the escape route after a protester threw a brick through her dining room window.
She had called it caution. My father had called it melodrama and paid for steel reinforcement anyway.
Helena stared into the dark shaft. “Of course your family has secret architecture.”
“Do you need the light on?”
Her eyes cut to mine.
Not offended. Seen.
“Yes.”
I switched on the stair strips and kept the bedroom door open behind us until she entered by choice.
Mara’s voice came through my earpiece. “Convoy identifies as Special Financial Crimes. Warrant authentic.”
“Authentic and lawful are no longer synonyms.”
“Agreed. West team is holding the cliff path. Boat arrives in six.”
“We have four.”
“I enjoy impossible scheduling.”
Helena moved quickly down the narrow stairs. “Does she always sound bored during raids?”
“Only when angry.”
“I like her.”
“So do I.”
“Should I be jealous?”
The question was light. My response was not.
“No.”
She glanced back.
“There is no one else,” I said.
The stair ended inside a wine cellar carved into the cliff. I unlocked the ocean tunnel and smelled salt, wet stone, and diesel from the approaching boat.
Above us, a loudspeaker announced Helena’s name.
“Ms. Duarte, you are under federal arrest. Exit with your hands visible.”
She stopped.
“What happens if I surrender?”
“They take the key.”
“What happens if I run?”
“They call it proof.”
She faced the dark tunnel. “Those aren’t choices.”
“No.”
Her father’s warning cut through me: Trust no man who tells you protection requires silence.
I had spent my life reducing risk until choices disappeared. Helena made me see the violence in that habit.
“You choose the route,” I said. “Boat, cliff trail, or we stay and force the warrant into public court.”
“Can we survive the third?”
“I can keep them outside for perhaps twelve minutes. After that, no.”
“Boat.”
“Why?”
“Because I am not giving Vale the image of me surrendering from a house his old ally owned. And I am not climbing a wet cliff in gala shoes.”
“Excellent reasoning.”
“I try.”
The first impact shook dust from the cellar ceiling.
They had breached the front gate.
We ran through the tunnel. Helena carried the red key beneath her dress and a waterproof evidence pouch strapped to her thigh.
I had given her the pouch. She had chosen where to wear it.
Progress.
At the cave mouth, waves crashed against a narrow dock. A black rigid-hull boat cut toward us through the dark water.
Gunfire cracked behind the house.
“Your people?” Helena asked.
“Warning shots.”
“Toward federal officers?”
“Toward trees with poor judgment.”
The boat swung alongside. Mara stood at the controls, hair tied back, rain jacket open over evening clothes.
“You two look indecently well rested,” she said.
“We were discussing evidence,” Helena replied.
“I’m sure it was thoroughly examined.”
I helped Helena aboard. She shot me a look when my hand lingered at her waist.
The federal loudspeaker echoed from the cliff. “Gabriel Salles, aiding a fugitive is a criminal offense.”
Mara accelerated.
The boat slammed over the first wave. Helena caught the rail, laughing once from pure shock. I braced behind her, one arm around her waist.
“Still prefer the boat?”
“Ask me when I can feel my spine.”
Searchlights swept the water from the cliff road. A helicopter rose beyond the palms.
“Too fast,” Mara said. “They had air support staged.”
“The warrant package included an extraction plan,” Helena said. “Before the shooting.”
She understood the machinery faster than most trained analysts.
“Can they track the boat?” she asked.
“Only until I kill the transponder,” Mara said.
“No.” Helena’s answer came instantly.
Mara looked at me.
I looked at Helena. “Why?”
“Because disappearing confirms the terrorist narrative. Keep the transponder live and route us toward the public marina at Santa Luz. Make them explain on television why five federal vehicles and a helicopter chased a reporter.”
“It exposes our destination,” Mara said.
“Then change it after cameras see us.”
Mara smiled. “I like her too.”
We reached the public marina at first light. Fishing crews filmed us as we transferred into a delivery van parked beside the market. Helena walked in full view with her hands empty and her face uncovered.
By the time the helicopter arrived, the van had entered the maze of morning traffic.
Our next safe point was an abandoned observatory in the hills north of the capital, a property Bastion had acquired through three shells after Rafael died. I gave Mara two possible routes.
Helena rejected both.
“They’ll expect Bastion locations,” she said. “Take the old pilgrimage road.”
“It adds ninety minutes.”
“It avoids electronic tolls and passes six live-streaming roadside shrines.”
I studied the map. “You researched escape routes?”
“I reported on campaign finance. Same skill set.”
Mara took the pilgrimage road.
Helena sat beside me in the rear, wrapped in my coat. She had not slept. Neither had I.
The space between us held the memory of her above me, the way she had taken control without asking permission from her fear.
I wanted to pull her onto my lap.
Instead, I handed her a protein bar.
She looked at it. “Romance is alive.”
“You need food.”
“I need coffee.”
“Eat first.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was a desperate appeal to your common sense.”
She opened the bar. “Better.”
At eight, Vale appeared on every network.
He stood beneath the national flag in the tribunal’s press hall. His voice carried sorrow without fatigue.
“An organized campaign has attempted to destabilize confidence in our financial system through falsified reports, cyber intrusion, and targeted violence.”
Helena stopped chewing.
Vale continued. “The court has authorized proportionate measures to protect depositors, journalists, and public servants from manipulation.”
“Protect journalists,” she said softly.
On screen, her photograph appeared beside a red banner marked WANTED FOR QUESTIONING.
Vale’s face returned.
“No citizen is above the law. No private company may obstruct lawful authority.”
My phone filled with notices.
Bastion’s government licenses suspended.
Corporate accounts placed under review.
Board emergency session called.
My father’s foundation demanded I separate the company from Helena.
I deleted the messages.
“You should answer them,” she said.
“No.”
“Thousands of people work for you.”
“I know.”
“You cannot burn a company because I asked a question.”
“You did not ask.”
“That makes it worse.”
I turned toward her. “I have spent eight years building a machine powerful enough to confront Vale. I will not protect the machine by handing him the woman who found the proof.”
Her expression shifted.
“Do not say things like that when I’m trying to be angry.”
“I have poor timing.”
“You have excellent timing. That’s the problem.”
The van slowed near the observatory gate.
Mara swore.
A line of federal vehicles blocked the entrance.
A woman stepped into the road wearing a dark field jacket. Thirty-five, dark hair cut at the chin, posture as familiar as my own.
Lucia.
My sister raised a megaphone.
“Gabriel, step out of the vehicle. Surrender Helena Duarte and place your hands where I can see them.”
Helena looked at me. “You said your sister was on a banking board.”
“She was.”
“Why does she have federal agents?”
“I don’t know.”
Lucia lowered the megaphone.
Our eyes met through the windshield.
Then she drew her sidearm and aimed directly at Helena.