Chapter 7 - Through the Flames
Thick, dark smoke began to billow from the ornate brass floor vents, rising quickly toward the high, painted ceilings of the grand foyer. The smell of burning insulation and natural gas filled the air, sharp and choking.
“Daddy, it’s hot!” Lily cried, burying her face into Daniel’s neck as the ambient temperature inside the foyer began to spike.
“Stay low!” Daniel ordered, lowering Sarah to the marble floor near the fountain. “Sarah, can you bypass the window grates from the security room?”
Sarah coughed, her thin chest heaving as she swallowed mouthfuls of smoke. “The main panel in the study… it has a manual hydraulic override… but it requires two people to pull the levers simultaneously!”
Up on the balcony, Vanessa let out a hysterical laugh, coughing as the rising smoke began to envelop her position. “You can’t reach the study, Daniel! I locked the double doors from the inside! You’re going to burn right here in your precious foyer!”
She raised the revolver, firing wildly down into the smoke.
BANG! BANG!
The bullets shattered the marble basin of the indoor fountain, sending jets of water spraying across the floor.
Daniel grabbed a heavy brass floor lamp from beside the entryway table. He kept low, using the rising cloud of black smoke as cover, and moved silently around the perimeter of the room toward the base of the grand staircase.
“Daniel, where are you?!” Vanessa screamed, swinging her gun frantically left and right through the fog. “Show yourself, you coward!”
Daniel emerged from the smoke right behind her on the landing. With a ferocious roar, he swung the heavy brass lamp like a baseball bat.
CRACK!
The brass pole struck Vanessa’s arms, knocking the revolver clean over the railing. It plummeted three stories down, shattering on the marble floor below.
Vanessa shrieked in pain, falling back against the wall. She looked up to see Daniel standing over her, his face covered in soot, his eyes filled with relentless determination.
“It’s over, Vanessa,” Daniel said, his voice cold. “Give me the master keycard.”
Vanessa stared at him, her lips pulling back into a crazy, frantic smile. “I threw it into the boiler fire before I came up, Daniel. There is no keycard. There is no escape. We all die together!”
Daniel didn't waste another second on her. He turned and sprinted back down the stairs, jumping over the bottom four steps to reach Sarah and Lily.
The heat was becoming unbearable. The wooden framing behind the plaster walls was crackling fiercely, the ceiling drywalls beginning to buckle under the intense heat of the gas fire below.
“She destroyed the keycard!” Daniel shouted over the roar of the flames. “We have to break through the study doors!”
“The study doors are reinforced oak!” Sarah cried out, holding Lily tightly against her lap. “You can’t break them without heavy tools!”
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Daniel’s eyes swept across the burning room, locking onto the heavy, two-ton solid-bronze statue of his grandfather that sat in the center of the foyer display.
“I don't need tools,” Daniel growled. “I have physics.”
