Chapter 8 - The Price Of Silence
The blast blew a jagged, gaping hole straight through the plaster ceiling above the hallway runner.
Lily tumbled backward onto the floor, screaming as her birth mother clawed mercilessly at her eyes and throat.
The younger Lily kicked wildly with her expensive boots, trying to dislodge the skeletal woman on top of her.
“Get off me, you disgusting animal!” Lily shrieked, dropping the heavy shotgun onto the floorboards.
Emma didn't hesitate for a single microsecond.
She lunged across the threshold, kicking the dropped shotgun down the stairwell before anyone could reach it.
The heavy weapon clattered down the wooden steps, firing a stray shell into the bottom baseboard.
At that exact moment, Deputy Vance Miller cleared the landing of the stairs, service pistol drawn and leveled.
The blinding beam of his tactical flashlight washed over the horrifying tableau in the hallway.
Plaster dust hung in the air like thick winter fog, illuminated by flashes of thunderstorm lightning outside.
Miller saw Emma standing with a smoking .38 revolver in her hand.
He saw an emaciated boy with a scarred forehead holding a broken wooden stake to Arthur’s throat.
And he saw two women with identical, blood-streaked faces rolling on the floor in a vicious, tearing tangle.
“Drop the weapon! Drop it right now, Emma!” Miller roared, his gun tracking between Emma and Noah.
Emma didn't drop the gun; she backed up until her spine hit the doorpost of Mark’s study.
“Look at who is on the floor, Vance!” Emma screamed over the ringing in her ears.
“Look at that boy’s face before you pull that trigger!”
Miller’s tactical light shifted from Emma down to Noah’s face.
The deputy’s breath caught violently in his throat.
The gun in Miller’s hands wavered by a fraction of an inch as his jaw dropped in utter disbelief.
“Noah?” Miller breathed, his voice cracking beneath twenty years of small-town police history.
“Miller, shoot him!” Arthur wheezed from the floorboards, coughing up dark flecks of blood.
“The boy broke in... he tried to kill David! He’s gone completely insane!”
Noah didn't move the sharp point of the broken cane away from Arthur’s neck.
“Deputy Miller,” Noah spoke, his voice calm, cutting through the chaos like a silver blade.
“Badge number 408.”
Miller stopped breathing entirely, his eyes widening in complete shock.
“How do you know my badge number, son?”
“Because you were the one who signed the property release for Mark’s impounded sedan ten years ago,” Noah said.
Noah shifted his left hand into his hoodie pocket and pulled out the blood-stained titanium capsule.
He held it out into the glaring white beam of the tactical flashlight.
“You took twenty thousand dollars in an unmarked envelope from my grandfather to lose the trunk evidence.”
The hallway went so silent that the violent patter of rain against the roof sounded like a roaring waterfall.
Emma slowly turned her gaze from her son to the man she had trusted to protect this county.
Deputy Miller’s face had drained of every drop of blood, leaving him as gray as the storm clouds outside.
“Noah... you don't know what you’re talking about,” Miller stammered, his fingers tightening on his pistol grip.
“The trunk liner was soaked in chloroform and infant vomit,” Noah continued, his voice devoid of anger, stating pure facts.
“You burned the trunk liner in the county incinerator behind the maintenance shed on a Tuesday night.”
Lily managed to shove her emaciated mother off her chest with a desperate, frantic heave.
The young girl scrambled to her feet against the wall, blood streaming from three deep scratches across her left cheek.
“Shoot them, Vance!” Lily screamed, dropping all pretense of innocence, her voice shrill and commanding.
“Shoot both of them right now! You know what happens to your family if that ledger goes to the state prosecutor!”
Emma felt the last thread of her sanity snap in two.
The corruption hadn't stopped at her front porch.
It had infected the entire town infrastructure, sealing Noah into darkness for a decade.
Miller’s tactical light trembled violently as the deputy looked between the teenage girl and the returned boy.
“Lily, shut up!” Miller hissed, his eyes darting toward the open stairwell behind him.
“I’m not shutting up!” Lily spat, wiping blood from her chin with the back of her designer sleeve.
“You took the money, Vance! You bought your daughter’s college tuition with Mark’s dirty cash!”
“If Noah walks out of this house tonight, we all go to federal prison for life!”
Miller raised his service weapon, his breathing turning into shallow, panicked gasps.
The barrel of the police pistol shifted until it was pointing dead center between Emma’s eyes.
“Emma... I’m sorry,” Miller whispered, his knuckles turning dead white.
“I have two girls in college... I can’t let this come to light.”
Before Miller could pull the trigger, a deafening crash shook the lower floor of the house.
The front door was kicked off its hinges with the force of an oncoming train.
A harsh, mechanical voice boomed through the lower hallway through a high-decibel bullhorn.
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“STATE POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND GET ON THE GROUND!”
Heavy tactical boots swarmed into the foyer below, red laser dots dancing across the stairwell ceiling.
