Chapter 20 - The Glass Staircase Collapses
The basement descended into pandemonium. The second guard drew a weapon, but Julian tackled him into the towering wine racks. Hundreds of vintage bottles crashed onto the concrete floor, showering the dark room in shards of glass and dark, blood-red liquid.
“Run, Evelyn!” Julian shouted, grappling with the guard on the slick, soaking floor.
Patricia raised the revolver, aiming directly at Julian’s back. Evelyn did not think. The instinct of survival, forged through eight months of agony in hospital beds, erupted. She swung her weighted titanium cane with the full rotational force of her shoulders, striking Patricia’s wrist.
The gun fired wild, the bullet ricocheting off the stone ceiling with an ear-splitting report, before the weapon flew into the darkness, landing somewhere in the sea of broken glass.
Patricia screamed, clutching her fractured wrist. “You ungrateful bitch!”
Evelyn didn’t answer. She snatched the confidential manila folder and the smallest black ledger from the safe, stuffing them inside her winter coat. Julian slammed the second guard’s head into the iron rack, disabling him, and grabbed Evelyn’s arm. “The service tunnel—move!”
They ran through the old root cellar, Julian supporting Evelyn as she pushed past the agony flaming through her reconstructed knee. Behind them, Patricia’s voice shrieked through the darkness, wild, manic, and desperate: “Kill them! You don’t get paid if they walk out of this house!”
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They burst through the storm cellar doors into the raging blizzard outside. Sleet whipped against their faces like needles. Julian threw Evelyn into the passenger seat of the SUV, threw the vehicle into reverse, and smashed through the locked wrought-iron gate just as headlights appeared at the end of the long driveway.
Three black sedans were blocking the main road. The trap had been laid, and the highway was shut.
