The gunshot cracked through the warehouse just as the freezer lock released.
Inside the steel chamber, Olivia flinched so hard that another contraction seized her abdomen.
She pressed both hands beneath the curve of her stomach and tried to remain upright as the door shifted half an inch.
Warm air slipped through the narrow opening.
So did shouting.
“Get down!” Ethan Cole ordered.
A second impact followed, metallic rather than explosive.
Then someone slammed against the outside of the freezer door.
Olivia could no longer feel her fingers.
Her knees buckled, but she forced herself to stay conscious.
The babies were still moving, though their kicks had become weaker and farther apart.
“Ethan,” she tried to call.
Her voice barely carried.
The door opened another inch, then stopped against something heavy.
Outside, Derek was sprawled on the concrete beside the control panel.
A pistol lay several feet from his hand.
The gunshot had not struck anyone.
Ethan’s security chief, Marcus Vale, had fired into a ceiling beam after seeing Derek draw the weapon from his coat.
The warning had given Marcus enough time to tackle him.
Now two security officers pinned Derek facedown while he twisted beneath them.
“She set me up!” he shouted.
“Olivia planned this with him!”
Ethan ignored him.
He and Marcus dragged a fallen metal cart away from the freezer door, and Ethan pulled it open.
A wall of white vapor rolled across the warehouse floor.
Olivia stood inside, one hand gripping a shelf, her maternity dress crusted with frost at the hem.
Her lips were pale.
Her eyes found Ethan’s face, but there was no recognition in them at first.
“You’re real,” she whispered.
Ethan stepped into the freezer without hesitation and caught her as her legs gave way.
“I’ve got you.”
“My babies.”
“Paramedics are here.”
He carried her out into the warehouse as emergency crews rushed through the loading entrance.
A paramedic wrapped heated blankets around her shoulders while another placed an oxygen mask over her face.
Derek lifted his head from the floor.
“Olivia, listen to me,” he called.
“This is not what it looks like.”
She turned toward him slowly.
Five years earlier, that voice could calm her after a nightmare.
It had once made ordinary rooms feel safe.
Now it sounded like an instrument he had used too many times.
“You told me the insurance paid triple,” she said through the mask.
Every person in the warehouse heard her.
Derek’s expression changed.
For the first time that night, he understood there were witnesses he could not charm.
“She was confused,” he said quickly.
“The cold affected her judgment.
She came here because she was unstable.
I tried to stop her.”
Marcus reached toward the security desk and turned up the volume on a monitor.
Derek’s recorded voice filled the warehouse.
“The policy pays triple for accidental death.
And no one knows you’re here tonight.”
Derek stopped struggling.
