Chapter 4
Smoke reached us before the alarms did.
A thin gray line curled under the panic room door.
Mrs. Fallon smelled it first.
“Fire.”
Elena tightened her arms around Caleb.
I looked at the vents.
The panic room could hold against bullets.
Not smoke forever.
Marcus knew that.
He had overseen the last inspection.
He knew where to hurt the house.
I opened the emergency panel and checked the old schematic.
Fire origin indicators were dead.
Of course.
But the smoke came from the east wing.
Kitchen side.
The men had not just come to steal.
They came to erase evidence.
“Everyone up,” I said.
Elena helped Caleb stand.
His face was pale.
The pill had not fully worked yet.
I looked at Rourke.
He was bleeding, sweating, angry.
Useful.
“You know another way out?”
He laughed.
“You asking me?”
I pressed the gun to his knee.
“Once.”
His smile died.
“Service tunnel. Wine cellar. Leads to garden shed.”
“That tunnel was sealed ten years ago.”
“Marcus opened it last week.”
My stomach tightened.
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s how we were leaving with the boy.”
Elena whispered, “Caleb.”
I grabbed Rourke by the collar.
“You walk first.”
Mrs. Fallon opened the emergency kit and took masks.
We strapped one over Caleb’s face.
Then Elena’s.
Then hers.
I kept one hanging around my neck.
The panic room opened into smoke.
Heat pushed against us.
Somewhere distant, wood cracked.
The estate had burned once before, long before I owned it.
Old houses remembered flame.
We moved low along the hallway.
Rourke limped ahead.
I kept the gun against his back.
Caleb coughed behind me.
Each cough felt like a clock.
We reached the servant stairs.
Smoke thickened.
Mrs. Fallon whispered, “Sir, the kitchen.”
“Not kitchen. Cellar.”
Downstairs, the air was worse.
A sprinkler line had burst somewhere, but no system-wide flow.
Sabotage.
Marcus had been methodical.
We reached the wine cellar door.
Locked electronically.
Dead.
I shot the panel.
Nothing.
Rourke coughed.
“Manual latch behind the frame.”
I ripped away the molding.
There.
A steel lever.
The door clicked open.
Cool cellar air rolled out.
We rushed inside and shut the door behind us.
Darkness swallowed us.
Elena whispered Caleb’s name again and again.
“I’m okay,” he said.
He was lying.
Brave child.
Foolish child.
Daniel’s child.
We crossed the cellar between rows of bottles I no longer cared about.
At the back wall, behind an empty rack, was the tunnel hatch.
Open.
Fresh scratches on the floor.
Marcus had used it.
I motioned everyone behind me and entered first.
The tunnel smelled of dirt and salt.
Old stone.
Cold water.
Halfway through, we heard voices ahead.
Not rescuers.
One voice I knew.
Marcus.
“The west wing is lit. Vale either burns or runs here.”
Another man answered.
“Kane wants the boy breathing.”
“And Vale?”
A pause.
“Kane wants to ask him about the vault first.”
Elena’s breath caught.
I pulled her and Caleb into an alcove.
Mrs. Fallon followed.
Rourke tried to move.
I tightened my grip.
Marcus’s flashlight beam swept the tunnel.
Closer.
Closer.
He spoke again.
“I worked ten years for him. You know what he trusted most?”
The other man chuckled.
“What?”
“That nobody would dare betray him twice.”
He was right.
That was my vanity.
I trusted once I had paid a man well enough.
I forgot hatred sometimes paid better.
Marcus rounded the bend.
He saw Rourke first.
Then me.
For a heartbeat, old habit flashed in his eyes.
Sir.
Then the traitor returned.
He raised his gun.
I shoved Rourke into him.
The gun fired into stone.
The tunnel exploded with sound.
Elena screamed.
Caleb dropped.
Mrs. Fallon pulled him back.
I slammed Marcus into the wall.
He fought like a trained man because he was one.
He drove his elbow into my ribs.
Pain shot through me.
The second man charged.
Elena stepped from the alcove with a wine bottle she had taken from the cellar.
She smashed it across his face.
He collapsed.
Marcus saw her.
That second of distraction gave me what I needed.
I twisted his wrist until the gun fell, then struck him hard across the jaw.
He went down on one knee.
“Why?” I asked.
Blood ran from his mouth.
He smiled.
“Because you never saw us as people. Only locks with names.”
That cut deeper because part of it was true.
“Victor Kane sees people?”
“No. But he sees weakness. Yours was Daniel.”
He lunged for a knife.
I kicked it away and hit him again.
This time he stayed down.
Outside the tunnel, sirens finally sounded.
My men.
Marlow’s people.
Someone shouted my name.
We emerged into rain near the garden shed.
Behind us, flames licked the east side of my house.
Caleb collapsed on the wet grass.
Elena screamed for help.
Dr. Sayegh arrived with the extraction team and dropped beside him.
I stood in the rain, gun in hand, smoke burning my lungs, watching a doctor place oxygen over the boy’s face.
Caleb opened his eyes.
He looked at me.
“Did we win?”
I knelt beside him.
“Not yet.”
His tiny hand found mine.
“Then don’t stop.”
I looked toward the burning house.
Toward the vault code in my pocket.
May you like
Toward the past Daniel had hidden.
“I won’t.”
