Chapter 5 - THE BLAST IN THE PINES
Eight seconds.
Adrian didn't hesitate.
He didn't fire at Julian.
He dropped his Kimber into the snow on the threshold and launched himself across the cabin floor.
He tackled me and my mother simultaneously, his massive frame knocking us both down behind the heavy stone hearth in the corner.
Seven seconds.
"GET TO THE BASEMENT!" Julian screamed to his remaining men.
Six seconds.
The tactical operators bolted toward the rear kitchen door.
Five seconds.
Adrian threw his body completely over ours, his broad shoulders shielding my head, his left arm locking my mother against the floorboards.
The smell of his wool sweater—rain, cedar, and gunpowder—enveloped me.
"Cover your ears, Emma!" Adrian roared against my temple.
"Breathe out!"
Four seconds.
Three seconds.
Two seconds.
The world vanished into a deafening, white-hot roar.
BOOM!
The floorboards beneath the kitchen disintegrated into thousands of flying wooden splinters.
The shockwave tore through the cabin like an artillery shell.
The ceiling beams snapped with the sound of breaking bones.
Tons of cedar timber, stone mortar, and burning insulation rained down upon our backs.
The stone hearth held.
The massive limestone chimney deflected the direct blast, channeling the fire upward through the rotted roof.
Heat rolled over my face like a furnace blast.
The smell of pulverized drywall and burning pine needles choked my throat.
I couldn't hear.
A high-pitched, piercing whine screamed inside my eardrums.
Dust fell like gray snow, blanketing my hair and eyes.
Adrian lay motionless on top of us.
His heavy weight pressed down on my ribs, pinning me to the floor.
"Adrian...?" I gasped, coughing on the thick chemical smoke.
My hands reached up, frantic, searching his neck, his shoulders, his face.
My fingers came away wet.
Warm, sticky blood was pooling across the back of his neck where a flying timber had struck him.
"Adrian!" I screamed, my voice muffled by my own ringing ears.
He stirred with a ragged, guttural groan.
He pushed himself up on his forearms, clearing the debris from his broad back.
Blood ran down his left cheek from a jagged cut across his temple, but his dark eyes were wide and focused on my face.
"Are you broken, Emma?" he wheezed.
His voice was hoarse from the smoke.
"Did you take shrapnel?"
"I'm fine," I wept, grabbing his face with both hands.
"I'm fine! Look at your head!"
"It's just skin," he grunted.
He rolled off us, turning immediately to check my mother.
My mother was coughing on the floor, covered in white dust, but she was conscious.
Her cardigan was torn, her hands bruised, but she had no penetrating wounds.
The stone hearth had saved our lives.
The rest of the cabin was gone.
The roof had collapsed into the kitchen in a heap of burning ruins.
Julian Vance and his operators were nowhere to be seen, buried beneath the burning wreckage of the rear wing or fled into the woods.
Adrian stood up, swaying slightly on his feet as the concussion hit him.
He reached down with his right hand.
He helped my mother to her feet first, supporting her frail frame with steady, respectful care.
Then he turned to me.
He took my trembling hand in his.
His grip was warm, strong, unbreakable.
He pulled me up against his chest.
For three seconds, in the middle of the burning ruins, he simply held me.
His face buried in the crook of my neck, his heart hammering against my ribs like a wild beast.
"I thought I lost you on that road, Emma," he whispered into my hair.
His voice cracked with an emotion he had never allowed himself to show in three years of marriage.
"I drove twenty miles back toward Bellamy House like a madman."
"I thought they had put you in the river."
I pulled back slightly, looking up into his blood-streaked face.
The anger was still there, simmering beneath my skin, but the lies had begun to burn away.
"You still left me on that pavement, Adrian," I said, my voice shaking.
"Pride almost killed us both tonight."
"I know," he said softly.
He didn't make an excuse.
He didn't defend himself.
He simply took the truth on his chin like an honorable man.
From the snowy woods outside, the sound of heavy diesel engines rumbled through the trees.
Four sets of high-intensity halogen floodlights sliced through the smoke-filled ruins.
Moretti's strike team.
Two armored technical trucks were navigating the access road, their heavy steel plows pushing aside the burning debris.
Standing in the open bed of the lead truck, holding a high-caliber sniper rifle with a thermal scope, was Dominic Moretti.
Fifty years old.
Scarred across the mouth, wearing an expensive black tactical coat with a fur collar.
"ADRIAN VALE!" Dominic's voice boomed through an electric megaphone from fifty yards away.
"STEP OUT INTO THE LIGHT WITH THE WOMEN!"
"THE ENTIRE COUNTY IS SEALED!"
"YOU HAVE NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN!"
Adrian looked down at the floorboards.
His Kimber .45 lay half-buried in the white drywall dust three feet away.
He reached down and scooped the weapon up, wiping the grit from the slide with his sleeve.
He checked the magazine.
Seven rounds.
He looked at me, then at my mother.
"There is an old logging culvert behind the stone chimney," Adrian whispered.
"It leads three hundred yards through the gorge to the state highway."
"I parked my backup Suburban in the gravel pit by the bridge."
"Key is in the magnetic box beneath the rear bumper."
He shoved a small iron key into my palm.
"Take your mother and crawl through that pipe, Emma."
"What about you?" I demanded, grabbing his wrist.
"I'm not leaving you with Dominic Moretti!"
Adrian looked toward the advancing floodlights.
A slow, lethal smile curved the corners of his lips.
"Dominic thinks he came here to clean up Julian Vance's mess," Adrian said softly.
"He doesn't know that my father's enforcers are already staging at his private estate in Barrington."
Adrian pulled a digital detonator from his tactical vest.
He held it up in the firelight.
May you like
"Tonight, Emma," Adrian whispered,
"we burn the Moretti family out of Chicago forever."
