Damian heard the boots too. His eyes darkened. He looked up at the girl standing over him. "Get me out of here," he ordered, his voice tight.

Helen crossed her arms over her chest. A cold, mocking smile touched the corners of her mouth. "Why would I risk my neck for a dead man?"

"I can write you a check that will buy this entire mountain," Damian grunted, fighting a wave of nausea. "Get me out, and your life changes forever."

Helen looked at his expensive, ruined clothes with utter boredom. She turned her back on him and took a step toward the dense brush.

Panic and fury spiked in Damian's chest. He forced his hands into the mud and pushed himself up. His legs gave out instantly. He crashed back down onto the hard ground.

The impact tore his wound open. Fresh, hot blood soaked through the tight bandages. A low, agonizing sound ripped from his throat.

Helen stopped. She closed her eyes for a second, letting out a heavy, irritated sigh. She turned around and walked back to him.

She bent down, grabbed him by the collar of his ruined suit, and hauled his massive frame off the ground with a violent jerk.

Damian gasped, his vision swimming. He felt the terrifying, unnatural core strength radiating from this seemingly fragile girl.

Helen threw his heavy arm over her shoulder. She wrapped her arm around his waist, practically carrying his dead weight as she dragged him deep into the thickest part of the woods.

Every step sent fire shooting through Damian's abdomen. To keep himself from passing out, he forced his brain to work. "What's your name?" he demanded, his breath hot against her neck.

"Jane Smith," Helen lied smoothly, not missing a step.

Damian's brow furrowed. The name was painfully generic, the kind of alias a ghost would use. But the blood loss was making his thoughts thick and slow. He couldn't interrogate her.

Helen dragged him behind a waterfall of thick ivy vines, shoving him into a dark, narrow cave hidden in the rock face. They were completely out of sight.

She dropped him onto a flat, damp stone. She immediately went to the cave entrance, pulling a thin tripwire from her pocket and rigging it across the opening.

Damian watched her fluid, militaristic movements through half-open eyes. The suspicion in his gut burned hotter than his wound. "Give me your phone," he ordered, trying to project authority. "I need to contact my extraction team."

Helen walked back to him. She reached into the front pocket of her flannel shirt.

Damian held out his trembling hand, expecting a satellite phone.

Helen's fingers flicked out. She slapped a damp poultice of crushed, pungent leaves directly onto the side of his neck, right over his carotid artery.

The heavy sedative hit his bloodstream like a freight train. Damian's vision violently tilted.

He realized what she had done. Rage boiled in his chest. He stared at her face, fighting the darkness, trying to burn her features into his memory.

Helen looked down at him. Her expression was completely empty, like she was watching a bug struggle on its back.

Damian's eyes rolled back. His head hit the stone. He was out cold.

Helen waited three seconds. She reached down and unbuttoned the rest of his shirt to check his breathing.

Her eyes stopped on his chest. Right over his heart, there was a bizarre, jagged scar. The skin around it was flushed red and radiating an unnatural, burning heat against her knuckles.

Helen frowned. She pulled a small, rusted tin of homemade herb paste from her pack and smeared a thick, earthy-smelling layer over the burning scar.

She wiped her hands on her pants. She reached into his pockets, pulling out his leather wallet, his encrypted phone, and a small GPS tracker hidden in his watch. She shoved them all into her bag.

She grabbed handfuls of dry brush and threw them over his legs, hiding him in the shadows. She brushed away their footprints near the entrance.

Helen hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders. She walked out into the freezing night air, leaving Damian and the generic fake name behind in the dirt.

Damian's eyes snapped open. The blinding white light of a private hospital room in Manhattan stabbed his retinas.

He ripped the IV needle out of the back of his hand. Blood dripped onto the pristine white sheets. The private doctor standing nearby let out a panicked gasp.

Mark, Damian's executive assistant, stepped forward, his face pale. He held out a tablet. "Sir, the extraction team found you in the cave just in time."

Damian ignored the tablet. His jaw was locked tight. "Did you find the girl? Jane."

Mark swallowed hard, sweat beading on his forehead. "Sir, we ran the name through every database in West Virginia. There is no Jane Smith in that region that matches her physical description."

Damian snatched the tablet from Mark's hands and hurled it across the room. It shattered against the wall. "It's a fake name," he snarled, his chest heaving.

He touched his chest. The strange, burning heat in his scar was gone, replaced by a dull ache. His eyes darkened with a violent mix of anger and obsession.

"Find her," Damian ordered, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "Tear the state apart. I want that woman."

Four hundred miles away, outside a rusting trailer park in West Virginia, a black Maybach idled in the dirt.

Arthur, a man in a stiff suit, handed Helen a thick manila envelope. "The DNA results are conclusive," he said, his tone dripping with condescension. "You are a blood member of the Gallagher family of New York."

Helen stared at the name 'Fredy Gallagher' printed on the lab report. A cold, sharp smile cut across her face.

She didn't say a word. She turned around, walked into her cramped trailer, and grabbed a faded canvas duffel bag.

Hours later, the Maybach pulled through the massive wrought-iron gates of the Gallagher estate in Long Island.

Helen stepped out of the car. She wore cheap, faded jeans and a plain black t-shirt. She walked into the cavernous, marble-floored living room.

Eleanor, the matriarch of the family, sat rigidly on a velvet sofa. Her eyes raked over Helen with undisguised disgust.

"You smell like poverty," Eleanor said, her voice echoing in the quiet room. "It's practically baked into your skin."

Sylvia, Helen's stepmother, offered a tight, fake smile. Her eyes were hard and defensive.

Candice, her half-sister, stood by the fireplace in a custom couture dress, covering her mouth to hide a vicious smirk.

Helen didn't blink. She didn't look down at her clothes. She walked straight toward the sofa and stopped two feet from Eleanor, looking down at the older woman.

"I'm not here to beg for scraps," Helen said. Her voice was ice. "So drop the aristocratic act."

Eleanor's face turned a mottled purple. She gripped her pearl necklace. "You lack basic breeding!" she spat.

Helen let out a short, hollow laugh. She turned to the head butler standing frozen by the stairs. "Take me to my room."

The butler felt a sudden, terrifying pressure in his chest. Helen's eyes held a deadliness that made his knees weak. He bowed his head instantly and hurried up the stairs.

Behind her, Candice stomped her foot. "Mom, she's a feral animal! How can you let her talk to Grandma like that?"

Helen walked into the small, dusty guest room at the end of the hall. She shut the heavy oak door and locked it.

She walked to the window and stared down at the manicured lawns. Her eyes were pitch black.

"Everything you took from my mother," Helen whispered to the glass, her fingernails digging into her palms. "I'm going to rip it right back out of your hands."

Helen turned away from the window. She sat down on the edge of the stiff mattress and grabbed the remote, turning on the small television mounted on the wall.

A local news anchor was standing outside the National Museum in Manhattan. The banner at the bottom of the screen read: Exclusive Private Antiquities Exhibition Tonight.

The screen flashed to a B-roll of the artifacts. Helen's stomach dropped. Her pupils dilated.

Sitting on a velvet pedestal was an intricate, dark wood Lotus Box.

It was her mother's. Alverta had carried it everywhere before she vanished.

Helen dropped the remote. She unzipped her duffel bag and pulled out a heavy, encrypted micro-laptop. She booted it up, her fingers flying across the keys in a blur of motion, bypassing firewalls to access the Dark Web's auction ledgers.

The data loaded. An anonymous donor had transferred the Lotus Box to the museum's underground vault for the night.

Helen knew the truth. Hidden inside the false bottom of that box was the biological key her mother had died trying to protect.

She slammed the laptop shut. She wasn't going to let it sit in a vault.

By midnight, Helen was dressed in a skin-tight, light-absorbing black tactical suit. She pulled a black mask over her lower face.

She opened the guest room window. She slipped out into the cold night air, gripping the copper drainpipe. She slid down the three stories in seconds, her boots hitting the grass without a sound. She vaulted over the estate's stone wall and vanished into the shadows.

At 1:00 AM, Helen crouched on the roof of the National Museum.

She pried open an air vent and dropped into the dark, narrow shaft. She crawled until she reached the main security junction box. She plugged a small, black decryption drive into the port.

Lines of green code raced across her tiny wrist monitor. Ten seconds later, the infrared laser grid in the hallway below flickered and died for exactly three seconds.

Helen dove through the grate, hitting the marble floor in a silent forward roll before the lasers snapped back on.

She moved like a ghost, hugging the blind spots of the security cameras, descending toward the underground vault.

She reached the massive steel vault door. She pulled a pen-sized thermal laser from her belt and pressed it against the electronic lock. The metal hissed and melted. The heavy door clicked and slid open an inch.

Helen slipped inside. The vault was pitch black, save for the faint glow of emergency lights. In the center of the room, encased in bulletproof glass, sat the Lotus Box.

She pulled a diamond-tipped glass cutter from her pocket. As she raised her hand, her ears caught a sound.

A microscopic scuff of rubber on marble. Someone was coming through the secondary service door.

Helen aborted the movement. She melted into the deep shadows behind a towering Egyptian sarcophagus.

The service door swung open silently. Four men in black tactical gear fanned out into the room.

The man leading them was massive. His shoulders filled the doorway. He moved with a heavy, predatory grace that commanded the space.

The faint emergency light caught the sharp angle of his jaw. Helen's eyes narrowed behind her mask.

It was Damian Montgomery. The man she had drugged and left in the dirt.

Damian raised his hand, signaling his men to spread out. He was looking for something, his eyes scanning the glass cases.

Helen cursed silently. Her hand tightened around the hilt of her combat knife.

She had to get the Lotus Box out from under his nose without letting him see her face.