Chapter 14 - The Dead Woman’s Safe Deposit Box
The sound of shattering timber acted on Daniel like a shock of pure adrenaline. He didn't think; he lunged. Kicking the nursery door wide open, he grabbed Maya straight from her mattress just as the wide pine floorboards beneath the crib erupted upward in an explosion of splinters and rusted nails.
A pair of leather-gloved hands shot through the jagged opening, clutching the empty white crib sheet and dragging it down into the dark crawlspace with horrifying strength.
"Noah! Move! Front porch, NOW!" Daniel roared, tucking the screaming infant against his ribs with his left arm while leveling the shotgun with his right.
Noah didn't hesitate. Survival instinct, forged in the fires of Westchester, sent his small legs flying down the hallway toward the stairs. Daniel fired a single shell straight down through the gaping hole in the nursery floor. The 12-gauge blast obliterated the joists, the muzzle flash blindingly illuminating the empty, dust-choked dirt of the crawlspace below.
A high-pitched shriek of fury echoed through the house, retreating through the floor toward the cellar.
Daniel sprinted down the staircase, catching Noah at the bottom just as the boy threw the oak beam off the front door. They tumbled out into the freezing coastal fog, the porch lights buzzing uselessly against the suffocating gray mist.
"Get in the truck! Noah, run to the truck!" Daniel shoved his keys into Noah’s pocket.
Noah dashed toward the locked SUV parked fifty feet away on the gravel apron, but as Daniel stepped off the porch steps, headlights blazed to life through the fog at the foot of the driveway. An engine revved with a ferocious, throaty roar.
It wasn't a police cruiser. It was a black flatbed tow truck, bearing down on their SUV at full throttle.
"NOAH, DOWN!" Daniel screamed.
Noah threw himself into the ditch just as the flatbed slammed broadside into Daniel’s SUV with a deafening screech of crushing steel and exploding safety glass. The impact threw the family car thirty feet across the gravel, wedging it hopelessly against the cliffside boulder.
The driver of the flatbed didn't step out. He reversed rapidly, tires screaming, then swung the truck across the driveway, blocking the only road leading back to the highway.
Through the cracked windshield of the flatbed, illuminated by the dashboard glow, Daniel saw a man wearing a surgical collar, his face bruised and swollen from an attempted hanging.
*Julian Vance.*
"He’s alive..." Noah gasped from the muddy grass, his face pale with horror. "Dad, the news said he died in jail!"
"They traded him," Daniel realized with sickening clarity, pulling Noah up by his jacket and dragging both children toward the edge of the cliff path. "The suicide was staged. She bought him out."
Before Julian could shift the heavy truck back into drive, the cellar doors at the side of the house burst open with a brutal metallic snap. Out into the swirling ocean fog stepped a figure in a black trench coat, soaked in mud and crawling with spiders from the crawlspace, holding a flare gun in one hand and Clara’s heavy brass jewelry case in the other.
Vanessa’s hair was sheared short, her aristocratic face smeared with dirt and dried blood, her eyes glittering with unhinged, feral triumph.
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"You can't run down the cliff, Daniel!" she shouted over the screaming wind, pointing the brass case at him. "Do you know what’s inside this box? Clara didn't leave her fortune to you. She didn't even leave it to Noah! She knew what you were! She paid me to clean the blood off her hands!"
***
