Chapter 15 - The Wolf at the Hearth
The Gulfstream touched down on the snow-drifted Bitterroot runway three hours later, the engines screaming in reverse thrust against a blizzard that had blinded the valley. Harrison didn't wait for the stairs. He kicked the cabin door open, jumped eight feet into a four-foot snowbank, and scrambled toward an all-terrain tactical quad idling at the edge of the hangar.
He didn't wear a coat. He held a modified Sig Sauer P320 in his gloved right hand, an extra magazine clenched between his teeth.
The quad’s engine roared as he tore up the steep, winding mountain road toward the Vance timber lodge. Black smoke was billowing into the blizzard from the shattered north wing of the estate.
Harrison killed the quad's headlights three hundred yards from the estate gates, letting momentum carry him into the shadow of the fallen pine trees. The front entrance hung open, splintered by high-yield breaching charges. Spent brass casings littered the pristine snow like dead beetles.
Harrison slipped through the side entrance into the kitchen. The smell of copper and cordite hung heavy in the air.
Near the industrial refrigerator, Claire’s lifeless body lay sprawled, eyes wide and glassy, staring up at the copper pots dangling from the ceiling. A wave of nausea hit Harrison, but rage swallowed it whole. He stepped over the pool of congealing blood and moved toward the hidden cellar staircase.
The steel vault door at the end of the stone corridor was slightly ajar.
Harrison raised his weapon, his heart pounding in his ears like a tribal drum. He nudged the door open with the toe of his combat boot.
Inside, sitting calmly beneath the flickering yellow glow of an emergency work light, sat Marcus.
Marcus had a field dressing taped across his left bicep, his tactical vest soaked in blood. On the table before him sat a silver laptop, displaying a flickering surveillance feed from a remote security hub.
In the corner of the room, curled up on an antique sofa under a thick wool blanket, lay Maya. She was fast asleep, her breathing deep and rhythmic.
"She’s alive," Marcus whispered without looking up. "She’s sedated, but she’s unhurt. I gave her an antidote for the immunosuppressant."
Harrison lowered his weapon, dropping to his knees beside Maya’s sofa. He pressed his trembling fingers to her neck, feeling the steady, reassuring pulse beneath her skin. He let out a long, ragged sob, pressing his forehead against her tiny knee.
"Who was it, Marcus?" Harrison growled, rising to his feet, eyes bloodshot and feral. "Who killed Claire? Who breached this ranch?"
Marcus slowly turned the laptop toward Harrison.
"The security footage was wiped from our local server," Marcus said, his voice deadly calm. "But my secondary off-site mirror in Iceland captured ten seconds of footage from the hallway before the cameras were disabled."
Marcus pressed play.
On the grainy black-and-white feed, Claire walked toward the pantry. Emerging from the shadowed hallway behind her was a woman clad in charcoal tactical gear. Her blond hair was tied into a sleek ponytail. She moved with predatory, surgical grace.
With one terrifyingly fluid motion, the woman grabbed Claire's chin, twisted, and dropped the elderly woman to the floor without breaking a sweat.
Then, the woman turned directly toward the camera.
She looked straight down the lens.
She had Evelyn’s high cheekbones. Evelyn’s sharp, arched nose. Evelyn’s unmistakable, predatory emerald eyes.
She lifted two fingers to her lips, blew a kiss to the camera, and vanished into the darkness.
"It’s impossible," Harrison whispered, his fingernails digging into his palms until blood dripped onto the stone floor. "She died in my arms. I felt her heart stop!"
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"Her heart did stop," Marcus said, pulling up a classified dossier that had just finished downloading on the laptop. "Because the woman who died in Mount Sinai wasn't Evelyn Vance."
***
