Chapter 25 - The Final Breath Behind the Wall
I didn't chase her into the maze. I couldn't.
I lunged for the climbing rope, scrambling up the wet bedrock, ripping my fingernails to bloody shreds as the reinforced steel hatch began to slide shut. I threw my shoulders through the gap just as the hydraulic teeth met, barely dragging my boots clear as four hundred pounds of steel snapped closed behind me with the force of a guillotine.
I burst out of the excavation pit, coughing up blood and concrete dust, and sprinted through the torrential rain toward my truck.
I threw the truck into gear, gravel firing from beneath the tires like shrapnel as I blew through the perimeter fence, sirens from responding county police cruisers wailing in the distance behind me.
I drove like a madman possessed by demons. Eighty miles an hour through flooded rural two-lane roads, tires hydroplaning, rain lashing against the cracked windshield so violently the wipers were useless.
*Twenty-two minutes.*
My phone was propped on the dashboard, repeatedly dialing Elena’s number. Straight to voicemail.
*“Hi, you’ve reached Elena. Please leave a message.”*
"Elena, pick up! Noah! God damn it, answer me!" I screamed into the steering wheel, slamming my fist against the dashboard.
At minute twenty-four, the truck skidded sideways into the gravel lot of the Oakridge Inn.
The main house was dark. Behind the main building, half-hidden by overgrown weeping willows, sat the old brick groundskeeper shed. Thick, pale gray smoke was curling out from beneath the rubber weatherstripping of the locked steel maintenance door.
A heavy industrial generator was roaring outside, its exhaust pipe routed directly through a drilled hole in the shed's brick wall.
"NOAH! ELENA!"
I threw myself against the steel door. It didn't budge. It was padlocked with a brand-new, hardened boron-carbide master lock.
I drew my Glock, fired three rounds directly into the shackle. Sparks showered over my face. I kicked the door with everything left in my body.
The door flew open.
A wall of suffocating, blinding carbon monoxide and chemical smoke rolled out into the rain.
On the concrete floor inside, Elena was lying motionless, her arms locked defensively around Noah, shielding his body with hers. Noah’s eyes were rolled back, his lips tinted a faint, terrifying shade of cherry red.
"No, no, no! God, please!"
I dragged both of them out onto the wet grass, the rain pelting their unresponsive faces. I tore open Elena’s shirt, began furious chest compressions, breathing life into her cold mouth, then turning to Noah, alternating between them, sobbing, praying, screaming curses into the storm.
"Breathe! Noah, look at me! Elena, breathe!"
A ragged, choking gasp tore from Elena’s throat. She convulsed, vomiting water and soot, her eyelids fluttering open.
"Noah..." she croaked weakly, clawing at my jacket. "David... Noah..."
I pumped Noah’s chest harder. Five compressions. Breath. Five compressions. Breath.
Finally, Noah’s chest heaved. He choked, a violent cough wracking his body, and his eyes opened, unfocused and terrified. "Dad...?"
I collapsed over them, burying my face in Noah’s wet hair, holding both of them against my chest as if I could weld our bodies together.
Then, from the pocket of Elena’s jeans, a sound cut through the rain.
A phone was ringing.
Not my phone. Not Elena’s.
A burner phone tucked deep into her back pocket—a phone neither of us owned.
Elena looked down at it, her eyes wide with fresh, unspeakable dread. "She slipped it into my pocket when she ambushed us," Elena whispered, her voice barely audible. "She told me... she told me it was only beginning."
My hand was shaking violently as I reached down, pulled out the burner phone, and pressed the green button.
I held it to my ear.
The line was silent for three long seconds. The only sound was the steady, rhythmic tapping of rain.
Then, a voice spoke from the other end.
It wasn't Evelyn.
It was my mother.
The mother who had died four years ago in the federal penitentiary. The mother whose ashes I had personally scattered into the Atlantic Ocean.
May you like
*"David,"* her crisp, commanding, aristocratic voice chilled the marrow of my bones. *"Evelyn was always too sentimental to finish the work. Pack your bags, darling. Bring my grandson back to the estate. We’re opening the third door tonight."*
The line went dead.
