Chapter 7 - The Clock and the Cold Ground
I ran.
The titanium drive was clenched so tightly in my fist the metal bit into my flesh. I didn't head for the grand foyer; Caleb had mapped the mansion's ventilation routes into my mind during our four hours on Hubbard Street.
I slipped through the hidden servant corridor behind the library bookshelves, moving through the narrow, unheated passageway by memory. Behind me, the muffled shouts of Dominic’s enforcers echoed through the mansion's vents.
"Lock down the gates! Nobody leaves the property! Find her and put her down!"
I reached the service exit near the conservatory, kicked open the frozen latch, and tumbled out into the blinding white storm. The wind howled off the bluffs, driving sleet horizontally into my face. The snow had already covered my tracks from the morning, turning the five-acre estate into a disorienting maze of white.
Three gunshots cracked through the howling wind.
*Crack. Crack. Crack.*
The rounds chewed through the limestone pillar inches from my shoulder, showering my face with stone dust.
"Stop right there, girl!" Marcus’s voice cut through the gale. He was sprinting across the terrace, his heavy combat boots crunching through the crust of snow, his Glock leveled straight at my chest.
I turned to run, but my boot slipped on the ice-coated flagstones. I went down hard, the air violently expelled from my lungs as my back slammed against the frozen ground.
Marcus was on me in seconds. He planted his heavy combat boot squarely on my wrist, forcing my fingers open until the titanium drive slipped free onto the snow.
He leaned down, scooped up the drive, and clicked his tongue, a sadistic grin stretching across his scarred face. "Look at that. The little deaf boy gave you his secret toys. You really thought you two were smarter than the old man?"
He raised his gun, pointing the barrel directly between my eyes.
"Goodbye, sweetheart."
A figure dropped from the conservatory roof like a falling stone.
Caleb landed directly onto Marcus’s shoulders, the sheer kinetic force driving the two-hundred-pound enforcer face-first into the concrete terrace. The gunshot went wild, tearing harmlessly into the storm clouds above.
Before Marcus could roll over, Caleb drove his knee into the enforcer's kidney, swept Marcus’s gun arm back, and snapped the joint with a sickening, clean *crack*.
Marcus screamed—a guttural, agonizing sound that was swallowed instantly by the roaring wind.
Caleb didn't hesitate. He stripped the Glock from Marcus’s ruined hand, struck the enforcer across the temple with the butt of the weapon, knocking him dead cold into the snow, and scooped up the titanium drive.
He pulled me to my feet with one arm, his dark eyes blazing with an unholy fire.
*Move,* he signed with one hand, his face splattered with Marcus’s blood. *The front gate is breached. The cavalry is here.*
As if on cue, the distant wail of sirens cut through the winter storm.
Not police cruisers.
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Dozens of black tactical SUVs, their blue federal flashers strobing through the blinding snow, smashed straight through the wrought-iron gates of Vale Manor, crushing the steel pillars like matchsticks.
***
