Chapter 33 - The Man Who Was Never in the Grave
"Drop the weapon! Drop it right now! Hands where I can see them!"
The shouts came from behind the blinding glare of high-power spotlights. Doors slammed. Deputy boots crunched into the gravel and mud, handguns drawn, pointed directly at Daniel’s chest.
Daniel let the tactical shotgun fall from his numb fingers. It clattered against the wet stones. He slowly raised his hands, his palms dripping with rain and dark, oxygenated blood from his torn knuckles. "My wife and daughter are under the car," Daniel shouted, his voice cracking against the wind. "We were ambushed. The shooters fled west on the old logging trail. Black armored Ford van. Move, or you’ll lose them!"
Sheriff Miller, a gray-haired veteran with hollow eyes and a jaw set like concrete, pushed past two junior deputies. He looked at the overturned SUV, the unconscious mercenary pinned inside the crushed cab, the bullet hole gouged into the pine tree, and finally down at Claire, who was crawling out from beneath the undercarriage, clutching Lily against her chest with a death grip.
"Lower your weapons," Miller barked to his men. "Get an ambulance down here now! And call State Police dispatch—tell them we have a black utility van heading toward Route 9 via the logging cut. Block the county line!"
Claire staggered to her feet. Her coat was soaked through with mud, her hair plastered to her skull, her eyes wide with shock. Lily had buried her face into Claire’s neck, her tiny fingers tangled so tightly into Claire’s collar that her fingernails were white.
"Don't touch her," Claire whispered when a paramedic approached with a foil blanket. "Don't anyone touch my baby."
"Ma'am, you're bleeding," the paramedic said gently, holding up his hands.
"I don't care," Claire rasped. She turned her wild gaze to Daniel. "Who was on that phone, Daniel? Who was tapping that pipe?"
Daniel couldn’t answer. His knees suddenly gave out, and he dropped onto the wet asphalt, staring at the shattered burner phone resting in the mud. The screen had finally gone black, dead from water damage, but the words echoed in his brain like shrapnel ricocheting inside a vault.
*You buried an empty pine box thirty years ago, Danny.*
*I’ve come back for my granddaughter.*
"Daniel?" Sheriff Miller knelt beside him, placing a heavy, gloved hand on his shoulder. "Son, what happened here? Margaret is locked down in the county detention center under federal hold. Who hit you?"
"Arthur Vance," Daniel whispered. The name felt like drinking battery acid. It was a name that belonged to a tombstone in the overgrown Vance family plot behind the old chapel on Blackwood Ridge. A tombstone that had been carved in 1994.
Sheriff Miller’s face went ash-gray. His hand tightened on Daniel’s shoulder. "What did you just say?"
"You heard me, Miller," Daniel said, looking up, his eyes burning with an unholy fire. "The man who used to tap his wedding ring against his pipe before he beat Margaret. The man Margaret supposedly killed in the sawmill explosion when I was five years old. He’s alive. He was on that speaker. And he’s coming for Lily."
Miller stepped back, crossing himself involuntarily. "That's impossible, Daniel. I was a young deputy when that mill went up. We recovered teeth. We recovered a jawbone."
"Margaret bought the coroner, Miller!" Claire cried out, stepping forward, trembling with rage and terror. "She bought the funeral home! She paid Arthur Vance millions from the offshore accounts to walk away, to leave her in control of the estate! And now that Daniel and I took Box Zero, now that we froze Margaret’s accounts and put her in federal custody, Arthur's medical trust dried up. He needs money. Or he needs something worse."
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Sheriff Miller looked between the terrified young mother and the hollow-eyed father. He drew a deep, ragged breath and turned to his lead deputy. "Clear the safehouse at the old forestry station. Put two units on the perimeter, two on the roof, and tell dispatch to issue a Level One black-site detail. No records in the terminal. No radio chatter. If Arthur Vance is breathing, half this valley is already compromised."
***
