Chapter 14 - The Stalker in the Shadows
"Don't move," a low, gravelly voice commanded from the shadows.
Emily didn't scream. Her street instincts kicked in instantly.
She lowered her center of gravity, preparing to drive the heavy brass key into the intruder's throat.
The silhouette stepped into the thin beam of moonlight spilling through the draperies.
It was Cole Walker.
He lowered his suppressed sidearm, his sharp gray eyes darting from Emily's defensive stance to the open wall safe behind the swinging portrait.
"You're awake late, Miss Harrison," Cole said, his voice flat but observant.
"You have a habit of creeping around in the dark, Cole?" Emily shot back, keeping the leather ledger tightly tucked behind her jacket.
"My job is perimeter defense," Cole said, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind him. "And someone just breached the northern gate sensors thirty seconds ago."
Emily’s eyes widened. "What?"
"Two unidentified vehicles just cut through the secondary estate fencing," Cole said, his hand resting on his tactical radio. "They jammed the local cellular towers. We are on hard-line lockdown right now."
Before Emily could reply, the deafening shatter of downstairs glass echoed up the grand staircase.
Gunfire ripped through the quiet night—the sharp, muffled cracks of suppressed automatic weapons.
"They're inside," Cole muttered, pulling a secondary pistol from his ankle holster and handing it grip-first to Emily. "Ever fired one?"
"No," Emily whispered, taking the cold, heavy steel. "But I learn fast."
"Safety is off. Point and squeeze. Stay behind me."
Cole led her out into the carpeted hallway.
The emergency red lights of the estate were strobing silently along the ceiling.
At the end of the east corridor, Richard Harrison emerged from his master suite, wearing a silk dressing gown and holding an antique pump-action shotgun with deadly familiarity.
"Cole!" Richard barked, racking the slide with a clean, brutal sound. "Who the hell is on my property?"
"Mercenaries, sir," Cole replied, scanning the intersecting hallway. "They aren't here to rob you. They're moving with tactical formation toward this wing."
Suddenly, three men clad in black tactical gear and ballistic masks rounded the corner at the top of the marble stairs.
The lead gunman raised a submachine gun directly toward Emily.
Cole shoved Emily into an alcove as Richard fired.
The roar of the twelve-gauge shotgun in the enclosed corridor was thunderous.
The lead operative was thrown backward against the balustrade, crashing through the mahogany railing down into the foyer below.
Return fire peppered the plaster walls, showering Emily in white dust and splinters.
"Down the service stairs!" Cole shouted, firing two precise shots that dropped a second operative in his tracks. "The armored panic vault in the cellar!"
Emily grabbed her grandfather’s arm as the old man pumped another shell into the chamber. "Grandfather, move!"
They sprinted down the narrow servants' staircase that Emily had memorized from her mother's old estate blueprints.
Behind them, the shouts of the surviving intruders grew frantic in German and Russian.
They reached the heavy steel blast door of the cellar bunker.
Cole punched in the override code and shoved Richard and Emily inside.
"Cole, get in!" Emily yelled, reaching for his tactical vest.
"Someone has to lock the manual pressure valve from the outside, Miss Harrison," Cole said calmly, his eyes locked onto hers for a fraction of a second. "Otherwise, their thermal charges will blow the seam."
"Cole, that's suicide!"
"It's my contract," Cole said.
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He slammed the steel lever from the outside.
The hydraulic seals hissed shut, locking Emily and Richard inside the soundproof bunker just as a violent explosion shook the entire foundation of the mansion above them.
