the chrome grill of a ten-ton Brooklyn Gravel Service dump truck catapulted Sutsoff thirty feet, onto the windshield of a Mercedes, before she bounced into the middle of Central Park West.
Her bag with her laptop tumbled down the street.
The impact had clipped the stroller, sending it toddling into Central Park West traffic and into the path of the two pursuing NYPD patrol cars, their sirens wailing and lights flashing.
Jack moved toward the stroller, but Emma, her arms, hands, reaching, was quicker, seeing the fear in the baby’s eyes as wig-wag lights and bumpers roared toward him.
“Noooo!”
Emma’s fingers clamped the stroller handle and pulled it to her just as the officers braked, skidding to within inches of the baby’s foot.
The child was unharmed.
“Tyler!”
Emma thrust her face to his, gasping as his eyes brightened with recognition. She lifted him from the stroller, sat on the street and sobbed.
“Mommy’s got you! I’ll never let you go, never!”
Adhering to training and using their doors as shields, the officers put their hands on their weapons.
“Don’t move, lady! Don’t harm the baby. My partner’s going to approach you slowly. You give her the baby.”
“No!”
“Lady, you have to give us the baby!”
Gannon tried to help. “She’s the mother.”
“Back off, sir!” one cop said, taking in the gathering crowd. “Back off, everybody!”
Other officers took charge of the scene and one shouted into his shoulder microphone for an ambulance as the smell of burning rubber, the wail of more sirens and the hovering helicopter filled the air.
When Lancer and the other NYPD officers arrived, Gannon pleaded to him.
“Lancer, tell them it’s her baby!”
Lancer held up his ID and slowly defused the situation.
Police gathered around Sutsoff, while others rerouted traffic and sealed the scene, clearing the way for the ambulance as spectators and other reporters arrived.
Lancer picked up Sutsoff’s bag, pulled out her laptop and took it to a patrol car. Gannon nodded to a WPA photographer to get pictures.
“I didn’t see them,” the truck driver said. “I swear. I had the green!”
His rig was deep into the intersection. Sutsoff was a few feet away.
Her neck was broken, rib shards had speared her heart and she didn’t hear the paramedics working to save her. They slid an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Her head lolled and she met the eyes of Emma Lane, rocking her baby.
Emma stared at her.
As Gretchen Rosamunde Sutsoff lay in a growing pool of blood staring at the sky, a warm wave rolled over her.
Project Crucible no longer mattered to her.
Extremus Deus no longer mattered to her.
Gretchen was a happy little girl again flying above old London at night.
Flying like Peter Pan and Wendy and dreaming of living in London forever with her mother, her father and little brother, Will.
Epilogue
Gretchen Sutsoff died before her ambulance reached the hospital.
The first news reports indicated that there had been an attempted abduction of a baby boy at the Human World gathering when the fleeing suspect was killed in a traffic accident.
The unharmed child had been reunited with his mother.
What was not reported at the outset was how Dr. Foster Winfield and the experts from Project Crucible, Fort Detrick and the CDC had examined the files found in Sutsoff’s laptop and confirmed that she never activated her lethal agent. The microbe remained harmless and would pass safely through anyone’s system within twenty-four hours.
That analysis was supported by the fact that medical staff at the event in Central Park had no reports of any serious or unusual illnesses arising from the gathering.
In the days and weeks that followed, the Royal Bahamas Police, aided by U.S. authorities, began dismantling Sutsoff’s lab on Deus Island and the Blue Tortoise Kids’ Hideaway on Paradise Island.
Investigations at the Golden Dawn Fertility clinic, and clinics at other locations around the world, helped police uncover the networks used by Sutsoff and her inner circle.
All of the major players—Drake Stinson; General Dimitri, the intelligence chief; Goran, the human trafficker; Reich, the global banker and Downey, the arms dealer—had been found dead, victims of the weapon they’d helped develop.
An autopsy performed on Sutsoff resulted in the discovery of a malignant tumor that was removed from her brain. It exhibited widespread necrosis that could have contributed to her actions.
For all investigators, the priority remained the stolen children. They were all recovered with help from Sutsoff’s files. Medical experts examined them closely and monitored their health. Detectives around the world conducted exhaustive interviews and examinations of records, counterfeit and forged passports and illegal adoption files, and they determined that