Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 166

Chapter 166

Chapter 166

KLAUS

“And by the time anyone questions the reason, he’s already moving,” Bianca finished. She looked at the layout again. “The childcare room is on the second floor, east side. If he gets Theo out of the building through the east exit, the retrieval vehicles are positioned to-”

“To pick them up within three minutes,” Elijah said, following her logic to the map. He marked the connection between the exit and the vehicle positions. “That’s a well–planned extraction route.”

“It’s not improvised,” Bianca said. “He’s been to this building before, or he’s had access to detailed plans. The exit positioning, the vehicle placement–this is pre–arranged.”

I watched her work through it. She was precise and fast, moving through the operational logic with the same systematic quality she brought to medical problems–building the picture from available information, identifying gaps, asking the questions that produced the most useful answers.

“The anchor sites,” she said, looking at me. “Are they close enough to the assembly location to matter tonight? If Thorne gets Theo to Voss’s preparation site, how quickly can the ritual proceed?”

“Roy,” I said.

Roy sorted through his documents with practiced speed. “The primary preparation site is seventeen kilometers from the assembly location. If Thorne moves Theo from the assembly at, say, eight PM, Voss could theoretically begin the blood acquisition component within the hour.” He paused. “But she needs all three sources. Theo alone doesn’t complete it. She still needs Louis and-” He glanced at Bianca.”

The third source.”

“She’s working on those in parallel,” Bianca said. It wasn’t a question.

“Almost certainly,” Roy agreed. “Tonight is probably Theo because the assembly creates the best opportunity. Louis and the third source are likely planned for the following day or days.”

“Which means if we stop Thorne tonight,” Rivera said, “she loses her timeline. The astronomical configuration holds for eleven days, but she can’t do the ritual without all three. Stopping even one acquisition delays everything.”

“Or forces her to accelerate in ways that create more exposure,” Elijah added. “If she loses the clean opportunity with Theo, she has to improvise for the remaining time. Improvisation means mistakes.

Mistakes mean we can find her.”

I nodded. “Which is why tonight matters even if we can’t locate her primary site yet.” I looked around the table. “The objective is clear. We stop Thorne from acquiring Theo. We do it in a way that doesn’t tip our hand prematurely–we want him stopped, not warned. If he knows we’re on to him, he alerts Voss and she changes her approach.”

“How do we stop him without him knowing we’re the reason he’s stopped?” Mikael asked.

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“Matthew Morrison,” Rivera said.

The room was briefly quiet.

“If Matthew is prepared–specifically prepared, not generally on alert–he can prevent Thorne from getting anywhere near Theo without it looking like an intelligence–driven response,” Rivera continued. “To Thorne, it looks like a father being cautious. To us, it’s a deliberate block.”

“Matthew still doesn’t have the full picture,” I said.

“He has enough,” Rivera said. “And he’s sharp enough to work with partial information if the partial information is the right partial information.” He paused. “Someone needs to make contact with him

before the assembly starts. In the next hour.”

The room was quiet again, and the specific quality of the quiet told me everyone was thinking the same

thing and no one was saying it.

Bianca was the person who could make that contact most effectively. Had always been the person. And Bianca had gone to his street last night and come back without doing it because Mia’s car had been in the driveway and the moment hadn’t been right.

I looked at her.

She was looking at the layout, her expression focused and still.

“I’ll go,” she said. “Before the assembly starts. If I leave in the next twenty minutes, I can reach him before he enters the building.”

“Bianca-” Rivera started.

“The objective is Theo,” she said. She looked up at Rivera, and something passed between them that the rest of the room politely didn’t observe. “Matthew needs to know what Thorne is actually there to do. Not the general threat briefing–the specific action. What Thorne will try, how he’ll approach it, what it will look like.” She paused. “I can give him that in five minutes in a car park, without revealing who I am, if I frame it correctly.”

“He’ll want to know your source,” I said.

“He can want to know,” she said. “I don’t have to tell him.”

She was right, and the plan was workable, and I was about to say so when Louis spoke from his position on the floor.

“Mummy.”

Everyone looked at him.

He was looking at Bianca, the small frown back on his face, deeper this time. He’d stopped turning the Ankylosaurus over in his hands and was just holding it, his eyes on her with the specific quality of a child who’d been noticing something for a long time and had finally decided to say it.

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Bianca looked at him. “What is it, sweetheart?”