Chapter 9 - The Wolf at the Broken Gate
The roar of twin high-displacement diesel engines tore through the morning silence of the mountain ridge.
Olivia ran to the high arched windows of the conservatory, keeping behind the tattered velvet curtains as she peered down the winding gravel driveway.
Two matte-black heavy-duty pickup trucks were roaring up the steep incline, kicking up clouds of wet red clay behind their oversized mud tires.
In the passenger seat of the lead vehicle sat James.
He was wearing a black tactical jacket, a heavy canvas sling holding an assault rifle across his chest, and a wide white bandage wrapped tightly around his skull where Olivia had struck him with the brass lamp.
His face was twisted into an expression of frantic, murderous desperation.
“They're here,” Olivia announced, turning back toward Clara.
“Two trucks. At least six men, plus James.”
Clara didn't panic; she knelt down beside the two fallen private operatives and began stripping their tactical vests of extra ammunition, flash grenades, and sidearms.
“They aren't here to negotiate,” Clara said, tossing a Glock 19 across the floor toward Olivia.
Olivia caught the heavy handgun awkwardly, feeling the cold textured polymer against her palm.
“I've never fired a gun in my life,” Olivia admitted, her breathing growing shallow.
“Point the front sight at the center of their mass and squeeze the trigger smoothly,” Clara replied without looking up.
“If you hesitate, James will put a bullet through your skull and collect forty million dollars from the board before noon.”
Clara stood up, handing Olivia two spare magazines.
“Take Mother into the basement tunnel beneath the wine cellar.”
“There's a tunnel?” Olivia asked.
“This house was built during Prohibition by a bootlegger who supplied the entire northeast corridor,” Evelyn interjected from the floor, her voice laced with venom.
“The drainage tunnel leads three hundred yards south into the ravine behind the logging road.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Olivia asked suspiciously.
“Because if James gets his hands on that black encryption card, he executes all three of us on the spot,” Evelyn said pragmatically.
“James doesn't care about the Sterling legacy; he cares about settling his debts with the offshore syndicates.”
“Move!” Clara commanded, grabbing Evelyn by the upper arm and shoving her roughly toward the rear corridor of the manor.
They moved quickly through the dark, wood-paneled corridors of Highstone Ridge, the sound of splintering wood echoing from the front entrance as James and his team breached the manor’s heavy oak doors.
“Clear the ground floor!” James’s voice roared from the grand foyer.
“Check the conservatory! If the old woman is alive, take the keycard from her coat! Terminate the daughters on sight!”
Olivia felt a sick knot form in her stomach at the sound of the voice she had listened to across the breakfast table for four years.
Every memory of their quiet suburban life—raking leaves in October, picking out Christmas ornaments, nursing each other through winter colds—was completely obliterated, replaced by the monstrous reality of who he truly was.
They reached the heavy iron door of the wine cellar at the end of the kitchen hallway.
Clara pulled the heavy iron lever downward, swinging the door open to reveal a steep flight of stone stairs descending into the damp darkness.
“Get down there,” Clara ordered.
Olivia pushed Evelyn down the steps, following closely behind with the handgun clutched tightly in both hands.
Clara stayed at the top of the landing for five seconds, rigging two defensive flash grenades to a thin copper tripwire stretched across the cellar threshold.
She stepped down, closed the heavy iron cellar door until it was resting on the latch without locking, and descended into the dark.
The basement smelled of aged oak, mold, and wet limestone.
Rows of empty wooden wine racks stretched into the shadows, casting long, cage-like silhouettes against the damp walls.
At the far end of the cellar, behind a false stone facade, lay the entrance to the narrow escape tunnel.
Before they could reach the false wall, the iron door at the top of the stairs blew inward with a deafening bang.
The tripwire had detonated the flash grenades.
Screams of agony and curses echoed down the stone stairway as the concussive blast disoriented the lead point-man.
“They're in the cellar!” a voice screamed through the smoke.
Automatic gunfire immediately erupted down the staircase, heavy caliber rounds pulverizing the wooden wine racks and shattering century-old glass bottles into dust.
“Down!” Clara yelled, shoving Olivia and Evelyn behind a thick structural pillar of solid fieldstone.
Stone chips and hot lead fragments ricocheted off the pillar, stinging Olivia’s face and hands.
Clara leaned around the pillar and returned fire with three disciplined, double-tap shots.
A man cried out at the top of the stairs, followed by the heavy thud of a body tumbling down the stone steps.
“Olivia, get her into the tunnel!” Clara shouted, her face pale, the effort of firing and moving causing fresh blood to seep from the burn along her jaw.
“I'm not leaving you behind!” Olivia yelled back over the deafening echoes of gunfire.
“You have the encryption card!” Clara argued, firing two more rounds to suppress the doorway.
“Without that card, Mother wins anyway!”
Suddenly, a heavy figure appeared from behind a row of splintered wine barrels to their left.
It was James.
He had bypassed the main stairway, dropping down through an old service dumbwaiter shaft in the corner of the cellar.
His rifle was raised, his eyes wild with greed and panic.
“Drop the gun, Clara!” James screamed, his weapon leveled directly at Clara's chest.
Clara spun around, but her pistol slide locked back with a dry, metallic click.
Empty.
James smiled—a grotesque, blood-streaked grin beneath his head bandage.
May you like
“End of the line, sister,” James said, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Before he could fire, Olivia stepped out from behind the stone pillar, raised her Glock with both trembling hands, and squeezed the trigger.
