Chapter 7 - Ambush in the Dark
Arthur didn't even look up from the shredder. He fed another stack of green pages into the teeth of the machine. "You shouldn't have come back here, Vanessa. You struck a child. You brought every cop in the county down on our heads."
"I panicked!" Vanessa shrieked, taking a step toward him, the barrel of the revolver lifting slightly. "Your stupid granddaughter was about to open her mouth in front of twenty women! Do you think I wanted to smash her skull in? If she had told them what she saw, we’d both be in orange jumpsuits by now!"
"She's a six-year-old girl!" Arthur roared, slamming his palms down on the table, finally turning his wrath upon her. "She didn't understand what she saw! I could have convinced Claire it was an imaginary game! But you—you stupid, greedy little sociopath—you lost your head over five hundred dollars in a greeting card!"
"Don't you dare talk down to me, Arthur Vance!" Vanessa sneered, her voice trembling with hysteria. "Who set up the shell corporations in the Caymans? Me! Who found the dummy accounts in your credit union system to siphon off the unclaimed deceased accounts? Me! You were just a cowardly regional VP sitting on twenty years of embezzlement, too terrified to move a single dime until Mark brought me home!"
On the stairs, David felt me sway.
My brother. Mark. Vanessa hadn't married him because she loved his goofy smile or his loyalty. She had targeted him. She had discovered what my father was doing years ago and had inserted herself into our family like a parasitic wasp.
"And now you're going to give me the ledger with the Swiss routing numbers," Vanessa demanded, cocking the hammer of the gun. The sound was deafeningly loud in the concrete basement. "Or I leave you here with a bullet in your chest, set this diesel fuel alight, and walk away."
Arthur laughed, a dry, rattling sound. "You shoot me, Vanessa, and the security system trips the silent panic alarm. The police will be here in four minutes. You don't have the stomach for it."
"Try me," she snarled.
David looked at me, his eyes wide with urgency. He reached into his coat, pulled out his smartphone, and tapped the screen. He was recording. Every single word, every confession, every brick of cash on that table was being transmitted live to Detective Marcus Harris's secure precinct feed.
Suddenly, a loud, sharp groan echoed from the top of the stairs.
The hallway door swung wide open.
"Dad? Vee?"
Mark's voice drifted down the stairwell, slurred and thick with agony. "Dad, the front door was open... Mom’s asleep... Vee, why is your phone off?"
Vanessa spun toward the stairs, the gun swinging directly up toward the steps—directly toward Mark, and directly through the line where David and I were crouching.
"Mark, don't move!" I screamed, breaking cover.
"Claire?!" Mark yelled from the landing above.
Everything happened in a blur of violent, chaotic motion.
Vanessa saw me. Her eyes dilated with pure, venomous shock. "You?!"
She pulled the trigger.
The muzzle flash lit the dark basement like lightning. The bullet shattered a concrete riser six inches from my hip, spraying stone dust and shards into my face.
David lunged forward like a battering ram. He vaulted off the fourth step, throwing his entire two-hundred-pound frame across the concrete table, knocking the aluminum cases of cash to the floor in an explosion of paper and metal. He slammed into Vanessa, driving her into the steel shelving unit.
The shelves groaned and collapsed under the impact, raining heavy plastic bins and files down on top of them. The revolver spun across the slick floor, landing at my father’s feet.
Arthur stared down at the gun.
For three terrifying seconds, my father looked from the weapon, to David wrestling Vanessa's manic, clawing arms on the floor, to me—standing on the bottom step, clutching my pregnant belly in agonizing pain.
He reached down.
May you like
His fingers closed around the grip of the revolver.
***
