Chapter 45 - The Shadow at the Hunting Lodge
"Move! Now!" Vance barked, kicking his driver door open against the snowdrift.
He grabbed Arthur by the belt, dragging him headfirst out into the blinding whiteout.
A rifle shot shattered the windshield where Arthur's head had rested a fraction of a second before.
Vance and Arthur slid down the steep, wooded incline of the ravine, crashing through frozen briars and deep drifts.
The slope flattened into a forgotten clearing behind the old logging road.
Nestled among the towering pines stood a dilapidated forest service cabin, its windows dark and boarded over.
Vance kicked through the rotting wooden latch of the cabin door, tumbling inside with Arthur.
He slammed the door shut, dropping a heavy oak crossbar across the frame.
Inside, the cabin smelled of damp pine, ash, and old woodsmoke.
Arthur collapsed onto the hardwood floor, clutching his ankle, his face gray with shock and hypothermia.
"We don't have weapons, Vance," Arthur choked out, shivering violently. "He’s going to execute us both."
Vance stripped his wet jacket, tearing the sleeve into strips to bind Arthur's shattered joint.
"Charles Davenport doesn't want you dead yet, Arthur," Vance said, tying the knot with brutal tightness.
Arthur winced, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks. "Why? Why keep me alive?"
"Because Eleanor doesn't have the codes," a voice called out softly from the shadows outside the cabin window.
The voice was calm, cultured, and chillingly close.
Charles Davenport was standing on the porch, his boots scraping slowly over the rotting cedar planks.
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"She spent thirty years trying to extract them from your subconscious, Arthur," Charles continued through the wall.
"And she hid the master key in the only place you could never look."
