Chapter 27 - The Dash Through the Pine Ridge Woods
The closet door opened an inch. Mason’s tear-streaked face peered through the crack, his small hands clutching the antique brass clock to his chest like a shield.
“Daddy!” the boy choked out, instantly coughing from the chemical fumes drifting under the bedroom door.
Daniel kicked the door wide, scooped Mason up with one arm, and secured the captured tactical submachine gun across his shoulder with the other. “Cheetah, hold onto my neck. Wrap your legs around my waist and DO NOT let go. Close your eyes, Mason. Close them tight!”
“I’m holding, Daddy! I won't let go!” the six-year-old sobbed into Daniel’s neck, burying his face into his father’s torn, bloody shirt.
From down the hall, the crackle of flames suddenly joined the hiss of smoke. The operatives had tossed an incendiary device into the foyer downstairs. The antique staircase was already catching fire, orange tongues of flame licking up the polished oak banisters, cutting off their escape route to the front door.
There was only one way out.
Daniel carried Mason into the master bedroom, kicked open the French doors leading to the small second-story wooden balcony overlooking the back garden.
Below them lay the garden—the very patch of earth where Vanessa had driven the iron stake into the ground, where she had tried to strip this child of his humanity. Beyond the garden fence, the dense, black pines of the state forest stretched for miles into the rugged Appalachian foothills.
“Hang on tight, baby,” Daniel whispered.
He swung over the railing, hung by one arm for a fraction of a second to reduce the drop, and released his grip.
They fell ten feet, landing hard in the freshly turned dirt of the flower beds. Daniel’s knees buckled under the impact, a sharp, white-hot lance of pain shooting through his bruised ribs, but he curled his body around Mason, taking the brunt of the shock himself.
*Crack-crack-crack!*
High-caliber rounds tore through the upstairs window above them, spraying wood splinters and broken glass into the soil.
“They’re in the yard!” a voice shouted from the upper balcony.
Daniel didn't look back. Scrambling to his feet, ignoring the agony screaming through every bone in his torso, he bolted across the manicured lawn. He reached the garden fence, kicked down the rotting wooden gate, and plunged directly into the pitch-black cover of the Pine Ridge woods.
The forest swallowed them whole.
Branches tore at Daniel’s bare feet and scratched Mason’s arms, but the canopy overhead blocked the moonlight, turning the woods into a maze of black on black. Daniel ran on pure adrenaline, his lungs burning from the tear gas, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
Behind them, through the thick pine boughs, the night sky lit up with a brilliant, roaring orange glow.
Daniel paused behind the trunk of a massive fallen hemlock, turning his head for just a second.
His home—the sanctuary Emily had designed, the house where Mason had taken his first steps, the house the Vance family had tried to steal through blood and deceit—was completely consumed by a roaring wall of fire. The flames reached sixty feet into the night sky, sending sparks swirling into the stars.
Mason peeked out from Daniel’s shoulder, his little eyes wide with horror as he watched his bedroom window disintegrate into a shower of embers.
“Our house, Daddy...” Mason whimpered softly, a tear cutting a clean line through the soot on his cheek. “They burned our house.”
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“It’s just wood and stone, Mason,” Daniel whispered, kissing the top of the boy’s head, his voice fierce with unspeakable resolve. “You and me... *we* are the house. And nobody takes that from us. Nobody.”
***
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