Chapter 4 - The Sound of Thunder
"Grace, get back!" Daniel roared, his paternal instinct overriding every survival mechanism in his brain.
He didn't think. He didn't calculate margins or hedge risks. For the first time in sixty-five years, Daniel Whitmore moved on raw, unadulterated instinct. He lunged forward, sweeping his left arm down to scoop the child behind his hip while his right hand shot out like an iron vice, clamping around Silas Vance's wrist and forcing the barrel of the revolver up toward the ceiling.
*BANG!*
The gunshot was deafening inside the small wooden cabin. The plaster ceiling exploded into white powder and shattered laths, raining dust over their heads.
Grace screamed, covering her ears.
Silas grunted in surprise, shocked by the old man's terrifying, wiry strength. Daniel didn't let go. Decades of private boxing trainers and high-intensity workouts at Manhattan athletic clubs had kept his frame hard as granite. Using his leverage, Daniel twisted Silas's wrist violently inward, driving his elbow upward into the crook of Silas's arm.
Bone popped with a sickening crunch.
Silas shrieked in agony as his fingers went limp. The heavy .45 dropped into Daniel's open palm.
Without missing a beat, Daniel brought the heavy steel barrel down across Silas Vance’s jaw. The crack echoed like a splitting timber. Silas collapsed onto the floor, clutching his bleeding face, groaning in the dirt and plaster dust.
Daniel leveled the cocked revolver directly at the two younger men.
The two thugs froze, their faces turning the color of skim milk. The crowbars clattered out of their limp hands, bouncing against the pine boards.
"Get him up," Daniel commanded. His voice wasn't shaking. It was lower, colder, and far deadlier than the gunshot had been. "Pick up your boss. Put him in his truck. If I see either of your faces, or any vehicle belonging to Blackwood Timber within five miles of this cabin, I will not fire a warning shot into the roof. I will put a bullet through each of your engines, and then through your skulls."
"Y-yes, sir! Yes, mister!" one of the younger men stammered, frantically grabbing Silas beneath his armpits.
Together, they dragged their groaning, bloodied employer backward through the splintered doorway, down the porch steps, and into the cab of their battered Ford pickup. Within thirty seconds, the truck reversed down the rutted lane, tires spinning in the mud, spitting gravel as it fled down the mountain.
Silence returned to the hollow, heavy and thick, broken only by the settling dust and Grace's shallow, frantic panting.
Daniel lowered the hammer of the revolver and set it on the table. He turned around, his chest heaving, his heart pounding against his ribs like a caged beast.
Grace was staring up at him from the corner, pressed against the wall, her eyes dinner-plate wide.
"Grace..." Daniel started, taking a step toward her, extending his hand.
She flinched back, pressing herself flat against the rough wood. "You... you hit him."
"He was going to hurt you," Daniel said gently, kneeling once more, ignoring the sharp pain in his knuckles. "He was going to hurt your mother. I won't let anyone hurt you, Grace. Ever again."
A weak cough sounded from behind the floral curtain.
"Daniel..."
Daniel rose immediately and hurried back into the bedroom.
Emily had pulled herself half-upright against the headboard, her face pale as a shroud, a thin streak of dark blood trickling from the corner of her lips. The stress and the terrifying percussion of the gunshot had ruptured something inside her ravaged chest. Her breath whistled like wind through a cracked reed.
"Emily!" Daniel reached her side, wrapping his arms around her shivering shoulders. She was terrifyingly light, like a bundle of dry twigs. "Hold on. Please, Em, hold on."
"He'll... he'll come back with the sheriff, Daniel," Emily gasped, her vision unfocused, her cold, clammy hand gripping his forearm with whatever desperate strength she had left. "Silas's cousin... is the high sheriff here. You don't understand these mountains... they don't care about your lawyers. They will kill you here and bury you in an old mine shaft. Nobody will ever find you."
"They won't get the chance," Daniel said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his encrypted satellite phone. The cell towers on the ridge were down, but his iridium uplink bypassed terrestrial networks entirely.
He dialed a three-digit private speed-dial.
The call connected on the first ring.
"Mr. Whitmore?" The calm, measured voice of Marcus, his personal head of security and driver for twenty-two years, came through the speaker with crystalline clarity.
"Marcus," Daniel barked, his voice resuming the absolute authority of the titan he was. "Listen to me very carefully. I am in Harlan County, Kentucky. Deep in the ridge. I need a medical evacuation helicopter equipped for advanced critical respiratory care on my coordinates within forty-five minutes. I don't care if you have to charter it from the University of Kentucky Medical Center or pay the governor for the National Guard's bird. Get it in the air."
"Understood, sir. Initiating immediately."
"Next," Daniel continued, his eyes locked on Emily's fading face, "I want our private legal team to purchase every lien, every debt, and every tax deed issued in this county over the last ten years. Specifically a company named Blackwood Timber and Land. Find out who owns them, find out what banks hold their paper, and foreclose on every single piece of equipment they own by three o'clock this afternoon. Buy the local bank if you have to. Crush them, Marcus. Leave them without a roof over their heads."
"Consider it done, Mr. Whitmore. What is your status?"
"Critical," Daniel whispered, watching Emily’s eyes roll back toward the ceiling. "If that helicopter is five minutes late, I will tear this country apart with my bare hands."
He hung up the phone.
Emily’s head slumped sideways onto his shoulder. Her breathing had become a faint, shallow rattle.
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"Mama!" Grace cried, throwing herself across the bed, burying her face into her mother's chest. "Mama, wake up! Don't go to sleep! Please don't go to sleep!"
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