Chapter 5 - The Ambush at the Door
The distant wail of sirens grew louder, their red and blue strobes reflecting off the suburban trees outside the bay window. But before the patrol cruisers could reach the cul-de-sac, the sharp sound of gravel crunching in our driveway caught my attention.
It wasn't a police cruiser. It was a single, sleek black sedan parking abruptly behind my SUV.
The headlights cut through our sheer curtains.
A car door slammed.
Derek looked toward the front door, his pale face suddenly illuminated with a mixture of terror and dread. "It’s her," he whispered. "She has GPS tracking on my phone. She knows I haven't checked in."
Julianne Vance was here.
I didn't hesitate. I lowered the brass lamp, hurried down the short hallway, and checked the powder room door. "Toby," I whispered through the wood. "Stay completely silent. Keep the door locked. Mommy is right here."
"I hear sirens, Mommy," Toby's muffled voice replied.
"The police are almost here. Just stay quiet."
I sprinted back into the living room just as the front doorknob rattled. Julianne had a key. Of course she did—she was Toby’s godmother; she had possessed a spare key to our house since the day Julian and I moved in.
The heavy front door swung open.
Julianne stepped inside, shaking raindrops from her designer cashmere coat. In her right hand, she wasn't holding a handbag or legal files.
She was holding a compact, black semi-automatic pistol.
"Derek, you idiot," Julianne said smoothly, stepping into the foyer without wiping her boots. "You stopped answering your encrypted line thirty minutes ago. I told you that if Claire started asking questions about the school reports, you should just leave the premises and meet me at the marina—"
She stopped dead in her tracks as she rounded the corner into the living room.
She saw Derek lying on the floor, covered in dried soda and blood, clutching his broken ribs. She saw the television screen displaying her own voice recordings and offshore receipts. And finally, she saw me standing in the center of the room, holding the heavy brass lamp, my eyes burning with an ancient, unforgiving fury.
Julianne didn't scream. She didn't drop the gun. Her expression merely hardened into an icy, calculating mask of contempt.
"Well," Julianne said, raising the pistol and aiming it directly at my chest. "This is messy. I specifically told Derek that messiness is unprofessional."
"You killed Julian," I said, each word dropping like a lead weight onto the floorboards.
Julianne sighed, tilting her head slightly. "Julian was arrogant, Claire. He thought he could build an eight-figure empire on my legal expertise and then discard me like an hourly employee when he found out about a minor bookkeeping discrepancy. He was going to ruin my career. I simply protected my investment."
"And Toby?" I asked, my voice deadly steady despite the barrel of the gun pointed at my heart. "He was three years old when his father died. You held him at the church. You promised to protect him."
"Toby is a trust-fund vehicle," Julianne said coldly, her finger tightening on the trigger. "A vehicle that has outlived its usefulness. Derek was supposed to handle you both tomorrow on Route 9, but since you've decided to be clever, I'll just have to stage a murder-suicide tonight. Derek goes down as the abusive husband who snapped and shot his wife, and I arrive just in time as the heroic godmother who had to put him down in self-defense."
She shifted her aim slightly toward Derek.
"Julianne, wait!" Derek screamed from the rug. "Don't! We can take the boat! We have the offshore accounts!"
"You're a liability, Derek," Julianne said softly.
She turned the barrel back toward me.
Outside, the sirens were screaming into the driveway, tires screeching against wet asphalt. Headlights flooded the living room walls in blinding sweeps of white and red.
Julianne’s eyes widened with panic. She knew her window was closing. Her finger began to squeeze the trigger.
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"Drop the weapon!" a voice roared from the front porch.
***
