Chapter 13 - The Vault Beneath the Stones
The sudden, brutal reality of labor instantly shattered the standoff.
“Get her inside!” David Mercer barked, his calm accountant persona vanishing as he reached out to help steady my shoulder. “Call an ambulance, Mark!”
“No ambulance,” I gasped, the contraction clamping down on my lower abdomen with the force of an industrial vice. “Hospital is twenty-five minutes out... Mark, the car. We have to take the SUV.”
Mark didn't hesitate. He scooped me into his arms, ignoring Charles Holloway, ignoring Chloe, ignoring everything in the world except the woman groaning against his chest.
“Out of my way,” Mark snarled, his shoulder brushing past Charles Holloway so hard the older billionaire had to take a half-step back to keep his balance.
Charles didn't move toward the table. He stood by the balustrade, watching us with cold, detached calculation. “You have seventy-two hours, Avery,” he called after us, his voice carrying over the sound of my ragged breathing. “After seventy-two hours, the emergency injunction takes effect. Think about your daughter’s future before you decide to be a martyr for a dead man’s pride.”
Chloe stood frozen at the base of the steps, her hand clamped over her mouth, her eyes filled with sheer, unadulterated terror as Mark carried me past her toward our SUV parked beside the garage.
“Avery!” Chloe sobbed, taking two steps toward us. “Avery, I didn't know—I swear to God I didn't know he was going to threaten you like that!”
“Get in the car, Chloe!” Mark shouted over his shoulder, popping the rear door of the SUV and laying me gently onto the leather seat. “Get your baby and get in the damn car! Holloway is not staying on this property alone!”
Chloe turned on her heel and sprinted back toward the carriage house, her sneakers tearing through the grass.
Within two minutes, Chloe was in the front passenger seat, clutching Clara’s car seat between her knees, while Mark threw the SUV into reverse, tires screeching against the gravel as we spun around the fountain and tore down the driveway, leaving Charles Holloway standing alone on the terrace of Greystone Manor.
Beside me in the back seat, David Mercer was clutching the black lacquer box on his lap. He had grabbed it off the table before running down the steps.
“You brought it,” I whispered through clenched teeth, my forehead beaded with sweat as another wave of pain ripped through my pelvis.
“Your father didn't give thirty years of his life for me to leave this on a picnic table for Charles Holloway,” David said grimly, his knuckles white against the dark lacquer. “Breathe, Avery. Four seconds in, four seconds out. We’re twelve minutes from St. Jude’s.”
The contractions were coming every three minutes now.
The ride was a blur of autumn leaves streaking past tinted glass, Mark’s voice barking into his hands-free system at the labor and delivery triage desk, and Chloe’s quiet, broken weeping from the front seat.
“I’m sorry,” Chloe kept repeating, her voice cracking over and over. “I’m so sorry, Avery. Julian called me from the detention center last night. He was crying. He said his father told him he was going to make sure Julian died in prison unless Julian convinced me to give Charles the gate code. Julian begged me. He said Charles had people inside the facility. I was terrified...”
“Shut up, Chloe,” Mark snapped from the driver’s seat, his eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror. “Just breathe and let your sister get through this labor. We will deal with your treason later.”
“It’s not treason,” I gasped from the back seat, reaching out with a trembling hand until my fingers brushed the back of Chloe’s headrest. “She was... she was protecting her child. Just like... like I’m protecting mine.”
Chloe choked back a sob, turning around in her seat to grip my outstretched hand. “Avery, look at me. The black envelope. The one with my name on it.”
“What about it?” David asked, glancing down at the box.
“Julian stole a set of blueprint copies from Eleanor’s desk three months ago,” Chloe said rapidly, the words tumbling out of her mouth like spilled water. “He thought they were the original house plans. But they weren't. Thomas left a handwritten note in the margin of the foundation diagrams. Julian couldn't read it because it was written in Dad’s private engineering shorthand—the numerical code he used for stress tolerances.”
My mind, clouded by pain and adrenaline, suddenly locked onto the phrase.
*Numerical code.*
*10 - 24 - 94 - 08 - 12 - 23.*
“The cornerstone,” I whispered, gasping as another contraction peaked and receded, leaving my muscles shaking. “The letter said... Charles wants the master encryption drives and the physical zinc alloy templates buried in the Greystone cornerstone.”
“There is no cornerstone in the carriage house,” David said. “The cornerstone of Greystone Manor is in the original northeast foundation wall. Beneath the wine cellar.”
“No,” Chloe said, her grip on my fingers tightening. “Not beneath the wine cellar. Beneath the old cistern. When Dad built the carriage house in ninety-eight, he didn't pour a new foundation. He tied it into the municipal water main from the old nineteenth-century estate. The cistern isn't under the main house. It’s under Clara’s nursery.”
The realization hit the car like an electric current.
“Charles doesn't care about the partition lien,” David Mercer said, his voice dropping into horrified clarity. “The lawsuit was a distraction. The seventy-two-hour deadline was a bluff to keep us tied up with lawyers while Avery gave birth!”
“He’s at the carriage house right now,” Mark snarled, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel as he swerved around a delivery van.
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth against another blinding contraction. “He doesn't have the titanium cylinder. He doesn't have the field notebook. And he doesn't have the third key.”
“What third key?” David asked.
I reached down into the pocket of my cardigan, pulling out the small brass key Alistair Finch had handed me inside the cream envelope.
May you like
“The hospital first,” I ordered, squeezing Mark’s shoulder from behind his seat. “Our daughter comes first. Greystone can wait two hours. Charles Holloway can dig up every flagstone on that property with his bare hands, but without this cylinder, all he’s going to find is dirt.”
***
