Chapter 15 - The Ghost in the Security Feeds
“You always did hire such stubborn help, Julian,” the woman spoke, her voice possessing the same velvety cadence as Evelyn’s, but laced with a deeper, far more guttural resonance of hatred. Julian stepped out from the shadows, his firearm raised and locked dead-center on the woman’s chest, his fingers steady on the cold steel trigger. “Step away from that door,” Julian commanded, his voice vibrating with absolute lethality, “or you won't live long enough to see what your sister planned.”
The woman chuckled softly, an eerie, hollow sound that echoed off the high ceilings like a funeral bell. “My name is Victoria, little brother-in-law,” she purred, slowly raising her empty hands to show she held no weapon, though her posture remained coiled like a viper. “My sister Evelyn is the blunt instrument who took the beatings and delivered the blows; I’m the architect who ensures the house burns down to the foundations.” In an instant, she reached into her vest and hurled a flashbang canister directly at Julian’s feet.
The blinding detonation of white light and concussive sound ripped through the hallway, disorienting Julian’s senses and knocking him to his knees as his ears rang with agonizing high-pitched feedback. Gunfire erupted behind him as his security team engaged the shadows, bullets chewing through antique woodwork and shattering grandfather clocks into splinters of mahogany and brass. Through the blinding haze of white smoke, Julian saw Victoria lunge forward with astonishing speed, not toward Eleanor’s door, but toward Maria, driving a needle into the housekeeper’s neck and slinging her limp body over her shoulder with unnatural strength.
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“Maria!” Julian roared, blindly firing toward the terrace doors as he forced himself through the disorienting cloud of white phosphorus. The heavy glass French doors were smashed outward, their jagged edges dripping with rain and crimson streaks of blood as the nocturnal intruders vanished into the storm-drenched woods. Julian rushed to Eleanor’s side as the elderly woman unlocked the bedroom door, sobbing hysterically as she saw the destruction and realized Maria had been taken hostage to force their surrender.
Outside in the distance, the low, mechanical thrum of an unmarked helicopter rose above the roar of the thunder, banking sharply over the tree canopy before flying southward into the shroud of the storm clouds. On the dining room table where the guard had fallen, Victoria had left an encrypted handheld tablet that suddenly blinked to life with a glowing green video feed. On the screen was the inside of a moving van, showing Maria tied and gagged, and sitting right beside her, nursing a bruised shoulder in clean designer clothes, was Evelyn herself, smiling sickeningly into the camera.
