Chapter 8 - The Siege at Lenox
“They’re here,” Claire said softly, stepping back from the window.
Rebecca’s face went completely pale. She reached into her handbag with shaking hands, pulling out her cell phone. “I’m calling Agent Vance—I’m calling the state police—”
“No!” Claire snapped, stepping forward and clamping her hand over Rebecca’s wrist. “Miles has a cellular jammer in his SUV. Look at your signal.”
Rebecca looked down at her screen. The signal bar showed zero service, replaced by a flickering error icon.
“They aren't here to negotiate, Rebecca,” Claire said, her voice chillingly calm. “They are here to burn this house and everyone inside it.”
Outside, Miles Carter pulled a heavy tactical suppressor from his coat pocket and screwed it onto the barrel of his sidearm. He gestured to two of his men to take up positions at the rear of the cottage, while he and three others advanced quietly toward the front porch.
Inside, Claire’s mind was working at maximum capacity, running through the layout of the stone cottage she had memorized weeks ago.
“The basement,” Claire whispered, grabbing Rebecca by the arm and pulling her toward the kitchen. “There is an old root cellar hatch beneath the pantry floor that connects to a drainage culvert leading into the pine woods behind the property.”
“Can you fit through there?” Rebecca asked, looking at Claire’s prominent pregnant belly.
“I have to,” Claire said.
They moved quickly and silently into the small commercial kitchen. Claire pulled open the heavy wooden door of the pantry, swept aside a pile of old storage boxes, and revealed a heavy oak trapdoor set directly into the floorboards.
Outside, the heavy wooden front door of the cottage exploded inward under the force of a tactical breaching charge.
BOOM!
The sound vibrated through the small house, shattering the front windows and filling the living room with acrid smoke.
“Clear the primary rooms!” Miles’s voice echoed sharply from the entryway. “Check the office! Find the hard drives!”
Claire grabbed the iron ring of the cellar trapdoor and pulled it up with all her strength, fighting through the sudden, sharp pain in her lower back. The dark, narrow opening led down into a small stone basement smelling of damp earth and pine needle runoff.
“Go first,” Claire commanded Rebecca.
Rebecca didn't argue. She lowered herself quickly down the wooden ladder into the darkness below.
Claire took a deep breath, placed her hand over her stomach, and began stepping down the wooden rungs just as heavy tactical footsteps began pounding across the living room hardwood toward the kitchen.
“In the kitchen! Check the pantry!” a mercenary yelled.
Claire pulled the heavy oak trapdoor down over her head just as the kitchen door swung open above them. She slid the iron deadbolt shut from the underside.
CLANG.
“Down here!” a voice shouted from directly above the wooden hatch.
A second later, a hail of suppressed automatic gunfire tore through the heavy oak door. Wood splinters rained down onto Claire’s head and shoulders as she ducked low, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“Run!” Claire hissed to Rebecca in the pitch darkness of the cellar.
They moved quickly through the low-ceilinged stone passage. The air was freezing, damp, and thick with dirt. Claire was forced to walk at a stoop, her hands brushing against the wet stone walls to keep her balance in the absolute blackness.
Behind them, heavy thuds echoed through the wooden hatch as the mercenaries attempted to pry it open with crowbars.
At the end of the forty-foot stone culvert stood a rusted iron grate that opened into a deep, snow-filled ravine deep within the pine woods.
Rebecca reached the grate first, pushing against the rusted iron with both hands. It didn't move.
“It’s frozen shut!” Rebecca panicked, her voice rising.
“Move,” Claire ordered.
Claire stepped forward, wedging her shoulder against the iron frame. She used the full weight of her body, leaning into the iron with everything she had, pushing against the ice that sealed the hinges.
With a sharp, cracking sound, the iron grate gave way, swinging open into the freezing mountain air.
They tumbled out into the knee-deep snow of the ravine just as a massive explosion tore through the cottage behind them.
Miles Carter had detonated the internal incendiary charges, sending a towering column of orange fire and black smoke into the gray afternoon sky. The stone walls of the cottage held, but the wooden roof collapsed inward with a roar, showering the surrounding snow with burning embers.
From the edge of the woods, Claire looked back through the pine trees.
Miles Carter stood near the burning wreckage, his heavy gray coat dusted with snow, watching the flames consume the house. He held his phone to his ear, his expression cold and satisfied. He believed he had trapped them inside the burning structure. He believed the evidence, the lawyer, and the pregnant wife had all been erased in a single, clean operation.
Claire lay flat in the cold snow of the ravine, her body shaking from exhaustion and the freezing cold, her hands tightly protecting her child beneath her heavy coat.
Beside her, Rebecca was gasping for air, her face covered in soot. “Did... did he see us?”
“No,” Claire whispered, watching Miles turn and walk slowly back toward his SUV. “He thinks we’re dead.”
Claire pulled her hardware wallet from her internal coat pocket—the small black drive containing the master cryptographic keys to Cole Enterprises, the Newark port transfers, and the evidence of Miles Carter’s conspiracy with Warren Pike.
It was completely undamaged.
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Claire turned her head toward the dark pine forest that stretched westward toward the Massachusetts-New York border.
“Let him tell Adrian he succeeded,” Claire said, her voice dropping into an icy, lethal quiet. “It makes what comes next so much easier.”
