Chapter 8 - The Threshold of Winter
“Run!” Jason yelled.
He grabbed Megan by the elbow, hauling her to her feet, while pushing me toward the dark corridor leading to the storm cellar.
Behind us, two men in heavy tactical parkas came thundering down the wooden stairs, their boots striking the steps like hammer blows. They weren't wearing police uniforms, but they moved with the ruthless coordination of private security operatives.
“Claire Vance!” one of the men shouted, his voice echoing off the stone arches. “Stop! We are authorized representatives of the Vance Estate Special Committee! Do not move!”
“Don't listen to them!” Megan screamed, stumbling over the uneven dirt floor, clutching the metal box. “If they get that box, it disappears! The board members were in on the pension theft with Paul!”
Jason turned back, his face set like concrete. “Go, Claire! Open the bulkhead!”
“Jason, no!”
“Get Emma out of this house!” he roared.
He didn't wait for my answer. Jason pivoted, planting his feet in the narrow doorway of the brick corridor, raising the three-foot solid brass pipe. When the first operative lunged into the opening, Jason swung with the full rotational force of his body.
The impact of the brass against the man’s tactical vest sounded like a wet sack of concrete hitting pavement. The man grunted, staggering backward into his partner, knocking their heavy flashlights to the floor. The beams bounced across the vaulted ceiling in wild, spinning arcs.
I turned and ran down the corridor, Emma clutched against my breast.
The corridor ended at a rusted iron ladder bolted into the fieldstone wall, leading up to a pair of heavy wooden storm doors set at an angle into the ground outside.
I reached the ladder, shifting Emma so that her body was secured within my winter coat, zipped halfway up to hold her against my chest. Her little hands were knotted into my sweater, her wide blue eyes staring up at me in the dim light, terrified but silent.
“Hold on, Emma,” I whispered through chattering teeth. “Hold on to Mommy.”
I climbed the rusted rungs, my boots slipping on the cold iron. I reached the top and slammed the heels of my hands against the heavy oak bulkhead.
It didn't budge.
Ice had sealed the exterior frame. A thick sheet of frozen sleet and snow had cemented the heavy timber doors to the stone casing.
“Megan! Help me!” I yelled down the shaft.
Megan scrambled up the ladder behind me, wedging her shoulder against the wood beside mine. “One, two, three—push!”
We slammed our bodies against the heavy oak.
The wood groaned. A hairline fracture appeared in the ice outside with a sharp *CRACK* like a rifle shot.
Down in the corridor, a violent scuffle was underway. I heard Jason grunting, the sound of fists striking flesh, and then the sickening sound of metal clattering against stone.
“Jason!” I screamed.
“Push, Claire!” Jason’s voice roared from the shadows, ragged and breathless. “Push it open!”
Megan and I slammed our weight into the doors one more time.
The ice shattered.
The heavy oak doors burst upward, and a wall of sub-zero wind and blinding snow rushed into the shaft, instantly freezing the sweat on my forehead.
The storm was a white hurricane. The wind screamed through the bare branches of the orchard, swirling snow into blinding drifts that had already buried the cellar steps under three feet of powder.
I hauled myself up onto the frozen ground, dragging Megan up behind me.
Behind us, out of the dark opening of the storm cellar, Jason emerged. His lip was split, bleeding dark red against his pale chin, his jacket torn at the shoulder, but he was breathing, his eyes burning with adrenaline. He kicked the wooden doors shut and dragged a heavy concrete birdbath across the top of the frame, wedging it against the ground.
“The car,” Jason gasped, snow already plastering his hair to his forehead. “We have to get to the truck.”
We turned toward the driveway.
Through the howling whiteout, the Vance estate looked like a burning ship. Every window on the first two floors was blazing with light. The front doors hung open, and through the snow, we could see three figures struggling on the grand front porch.
Paul was on his knees in the snow, his hands behind his back, pinned by a man in dark gear.
And Evelyn.
Evelyn was standing at the edge of the terrace, her emerald silk robe whipped by the violent wind, screaming into the blizzard, her voice torn to ribbons by the storm. She looked like a ghost, a hollow specter clinging to the edge of a crumbling kingdom.
Then she saw us.
Across the hundred yards of snow-covered lawn, through the churning white sheets of the blizzard, Evelyn Vance locked her eyes onto mine.
She didn't scream for help.
She didn't yell for the security men.
May you like
She pointed at Emma, her face twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated hatred, and she took three rapid steps down the stone stairs into the snow, heading straight for us.
***
