Chapter 17 - Betrayal at Dawn
Gabriel didn't waste a second. He brought the heavy butt of his Glock down onto Julian’s skull, knocking the man unconscious instantly.
He didn't check the pulse. He didn't care.
Gabriel sprinted through the ruins of the mansion, bursting through the shattered front doors into the grey, freezing morning mist. His lungs burned like fire, blood dripping down his face from the knife cut on his cheek.
*Sophie.*
He tore down the hill, his boots sliding against wet leaves, branches whipping his face and tearing his clothes. The three hundred yards felt like three thousand miles. His mind raced through every moment of the last six months—Detective Vance offering him safe houses, Vance auditing the evidence, Vance asking detailed questions about Sophie’s recovery and the exact layout of the Cape May cottage.
Vance hadn't been an incorruptible cop. He was a bought-and-paid-for Blackwood creature who had traded his badge for a retirement cut of forty million dollars.
Gabriel broke through the tree line near the maintenance ditch.
His armored SUV was still smoking. But parked directly beside it was Vance’s unmarked black sedan.
The iron grate over the root cellar was pulled wide open.
Gabriel’s vision narrowed to a pinprick of sheer murderous focus. He drew his weapon, clearing the rim of the ditch with absolute silence.
Inside the earthen hollow of the cellar, Vance stood with a flashlight in one hand and a revolver in the other. Sophie was backed into the farthest corner of the dirt chamber, her knees drawn up to her chest, her face streaked with tears, her plush rabbit clutched like a shield.
"Come on, little girl," Vance was saying, his voice uncharacteristically soft, soothing, and terrifyingly cold. "Don't be difficult. Just hand over the metal tube in your doll's belly, and I’ll take you to see your daddy. You want to see your daddy, don't you?"
Sophie shook her head violently, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks.
"No," Sophie whimpered, her voice tiny but resolute. "You don't smell like Daddy. You smell like the bad cellar. You smell like Aunt Marlene."
"I don't have time for this, you stubborn little brat," Vance hissed, stepping forward and reaching down to grab Sophie’s hair.
"Vance," a voice called out from the opening above.
May you like
It was not a yell. It was a death sentence delivered with the weight of an executioner's axe.
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