Chapter 6 - The Blind Girl’s Strike
The grand library was a two-story room filled with floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves, a massive stone fireplace, and heavy leather couches.
Now, wrapped in complete darkness, it looked like a cavernous lair.
Nora dropped to one knee behind the central reading desk, her night-vision goggle unit pulled down over her eyes. The green-hued phosphor display lit up her face in a ghost-like glow.
“I count three targets entering through the courtyard terrace glass,” Nora whispered, holding up her hand to signal Declan. “Equipped with thermal optics and heavy armor.”
Declan crouched behind a leather sofa, his rifle rested over the arm. “Thermal optics? That means they can see our heat signatures through the furniture.”
“Not if we cut the fire suppression lines,” Hallie whispered from the shadows near the fireplace.
Declan looked toward his daughter. “Hallie, no—”
Before he could stop her, Hallie reached out to the brass wall fixture beside the mantel—the manual override lever for the estate’s industrial Halon and cold-water fire suppression system.
She pulled it down with all her weight.
HISSSSSSSS!
High-pressure nozzles mounted in the ceiling exploded, flooding the library with a freezing, torrential cascade of ice-cold well water.
Within three seconds, the entire room was drenched. The icy water instantly masked their body heat, blinding the mercenaries’ thermal optics with a wall of freezing white noise on their screens.
“What the hell?!” a mercenary cursed in the dark, ripping off his thermal goggles as they blurred into static. “My optics are washed out!”
“Now!” Nora barked.
Nora rose from behind the desk, her weapon barking three clean rounds into the dark.
PUFF-PUFF-PUFF!
The lead operator spun and fell into a glass display case.
Declan opened fire from the left, sweeping his suppression rounds across the mezzanine balcony, dropping the second operator over the carved railing.
The third mercenary—a massive man in full tactical gear—sprang out from behind a bookshelf, lunging directly toward the fireplace where Hallie was standing.
“HALLIE!” Declan screamed, swinging his heavy rifle, but the icy water made his boots slick, causing him to lose his footing on the marble floor.
The mercenary didn't see Hallie in the pitch-black darkness. He ran right past her, reaching for the wall control panel.
Hallie didn't panic. She didn't scream.
She stood frozen in the dark, her ears tracking the man’s heavy, wet footsteps, the metallic clatter of his tactical vest, and the sharp raspy intake of his breath.
He stopped two feet in front of her.
Hallie stepped forward in the dark.
She didn't use the gun. She remembered Nora’s lesson from the music room: In close quarters, a gun can be grabbed. A blade attached to your weight becomes an extension of your intent.
Hallie pulled the rubber-coated steel training knife from her belt.
She drove the sharp, reinforced tip upward with all her strength, driving it directly into the soft, unarmored gap beneath the mercenary’s tactical vest—right into his femoral nerve bundle near the inner thigh.
STAB!
The mercenary let out a blood-curdling shriek of agony as his leg completely collapsed beneath him. He hit the wet floor on his knees, clutching his leg, paralyzed by the intense nerve shock.
Hallie stepped smoothly behind him, brought her compact 9mm up, pressed the cold muzzle against the back of his tactical helmet, and pulled the slide back just like Nora had showed her.
“Don't move,” Hallie whispered into his ear, her voice as smooth and terrifying as her father’s. “Or I’ll let my maid finish this.”
Nora stepped out of the shadows, wiping water from her face, staring at the eleven-year-old girl holding a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound mercenary at gunpoint in absolute darkness.
Nora looked at Declan, who was slowly pulling himself up from the floor, completely speechless.
“I told you,” Nora said, a proud smile breaking across her face. “She’s a fast learner.”
Hallie lowered her gun slightly, her chin raised high. “Dad, the server terminal is beneath the third floorboard from the hearth. Open it.”
Declan walked over, kneeling beside his daughter. He looked at her with an awe so profound it transcended fear, love, and grief.
He didn't see a blind, fragile girl who needed to be locked in a stone cage anymore.
He saw his daughter—a survivor, a warrior, and the rightful heir to everything he owned.
He reached down, ripped open the floorboard, and pulled out the glowing, encrypted master drive containing every file, wiretap, and offshore bank record Constance Mercer had ever created.
“We have it,” Declan said.
Nora reloaded her weapon, staring toward the heavy double doors of the library as more footsteps echoed down the grand hallway.
“Vance is bringing the rest of his team into the courtyard,” Nora said, her eyes burning with lethal focus. “It’s time to end this.”
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Declan stood up, racking the slide of his assault rifle. He looked down at Hallie, then at Nora.
“No more hiding,” Declan declared softly. “We take the house back.”
