Chapter 7:


    Morning sunlight hit the cheap polyester curtains of the hotel room, turning the beige walls a sickly yellow.


    Isolde woke with a gasp, her hand instinctively reaching for the baby monitor that used to sit on her nightstand.


    Her hand hit air.


    Panic red—Effie is gone, she’s dead—before the memory of the night before washed over her. She sat up. Effie was curled up in the other queen bed, breathing deeply, a small line of drool on her pillow.


    Alive.


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    Isolde exhaled, her shoulders dropping. She wasn’t the grieving widow anymore. She was the architect of her own escape.


    She got up and checked her burner phone. No new messages, but the old ones were enough. The Institute wanted her back. But going back meant exposing her identity, and exposing her identity meant Grayson would find out she wasn’t just a housewife.


    She needed a middleman.


    Her old phone—the one Grayson paid for—rang. It was Mrs. Higgins.


    Isolde stared at it. She answered on speaker, her voice cool. “Hello?”


    “Mrs. Lancaster!” Mrs. Higgins sounded breathless. “Thank goodness. You need toe home. Kaiden refuses to eat his oatmeal. He says it’s lumpy. You’re the only one who knows how to make it smooth.”


    Isolde blinked. The absurdity of it almost made herugh.


    “Mrs. Higgins,” Isolde said, “are you employed by me or by Mr. Lancaster?”


    “I… well, by Mr. Lancaster, of course.”


    “Then ask him to make the oatmeal,” Isolde said. “Or ask Belle. She’s the mother, isn’t she?”


    “But… Mrs. Lancaster, please. The boy is screaming.”


    “I am not the servant anymore, Mrs. Higgins. I am not the nanny. And I am certainly not Mrs. Lancaster.”


    “But—”


    Isolde hung up. She blocked the number.


    She turned to see Effie sitting up, rubbing her eyes.


    “Who was that?” Effie asked.


    “Nobody,” Isolde said. “Just a wrong number.”


    She opened herptop and navigated to a Cayman Inds banking portal. She typed in aplex alphanumeric key from memory.


    ount Bnce: $42,300.50.


    It was the remnants of her racing winnings from her days as “Phantom.” It wasn’t a fortune, but it was enough to rent a small apartment and buy time.


    “Mommy, look.”


    Effie was holding a piece of hotel stationery. She had been drawing with aplimentary ballpoint pen.


    Isolde looked.


    It wasn’t a stick figure family. It was a rocket.


    But it wasn’t just a doodle. The proportions were surprisingly urate. The fins were angled correctly for aerodynamic stability.


    Isolde’s heart skipped a beat.


    “Did you draw this, Effie?”


    “Yes,” Effie whispered, looking shy. “Like the ones in your old books. The ones you keep under the bed.”


    Isolde felt a tear prick her eye. She had hidden her engineering textbooks under the bed in the guest room. Effie had found them. Effie had read them.


    “It’s beautiful,” Isolde said. She pointed to the nose cone. “But if you want it to go really fast, this angle needs to be sharper. To cut the air.”


    Effie nodded solemnly. She took the pen and corrected the line. A perfect 30-degree angle.


    Isolde stared. Her daughter wasn’t just “slow,” as Grayson imed. She was a savant.


    “Get dressed, baby,” Isolde said, her voice fierce with pride. “We’re going to find a new school. A school that knows you’re a star.”


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