Chapter 5 - THE METHANE TRAP“Wait, Daniel—what are you talking about?” I stepped forward, grabbing his arm. “If you trigger a gas release down here, this entire hill will cave in. We’ll bury ourselves alive!”
“We won't,” Daniel replied, his eyes burning with an intense, unforgiving fire. “Not if we seal the western bulkhead first. I spent the last two years mapping every square inch of this foundation while your father and Audrey Sinclair used my supposed death to siphon forty million dollars out of public trusts.”
Daniel pulled the iron lever halfway down. A deep, mechanical groan echoed through the stone foundations beneath our feet, followed by the heavy thud of pneumatic locks slamming shut somewhere deep in the sub-basement.
“That cuts off their pursuit,” Daniel explained rapidly, turning back to us. “The mercs can’t cross the lower trench without triggering the pressure plates. But buying time isn't enough. If we stay in this estate, they will hunt us down until every single one of us is dead.”
“Then we go public,” I said, tapping the tactical tablet on the floor. “We have the audio files. We have the financial ledgers on this flash drive. We walk out of here and upload it to every news network in the country.”
Daniel let out a harsh, bitter laugh.
“Upload it? Grant, do you really think your father and the Sinclair family control just a few crooked cops and guards?” Daniel shook his head. “The police chief is on their payroll. The federal prosecutor in this district is sitting on their board of directors. If you walk into a police station with this drive right now, you’ll be walking straight into a slaughterhouse.”
“Then what do we do?” Keller asked, checking his remaining magazine. “Just live in the sewers forever?”
“No,” Daniel said, pulling a heavy canvas map from inside his tattered trench coat and spreading it across an empty wine cask. “We turn the tables. We use the wedding.”
I blinked. “The wedding? My wedding to Audrey is scheduled for next Saturday at the estate chapel.”
“Exactly,” Daniel smirked grimly. “The elite of the state will be there. Politicians, judges, international investors. Every single person who keeps your father in power will be sitting in those pews. That is when we broadcast the truth—not to a computer screen, but onto the main altar screens in front of five hundred witnesses.”
The audacity of the plan took my breath away. It was insane. It was brilliant. It was suicidal.
“Audrey expects to trap me in a marriage that consolidates her family’s control over our assets,” I said slowly, a dark smile forming on my lips. “We’ll give her a wedding she’ll never forget.”
Before anyone could answer, a loud, concussive boom echoed through the wine cellar.
The stone floor beneath us trembled violently. Dust and loose mortar rained down from the vaulted ceiling.
“They didn’t take the bait,” Keller cursed, looking back toward the tunnel entrance. “They brought explosives. They’re blasting through the bulkhead!”
“Move!” Daniel shouted, grabbing Lily into his arms while Hannah clutched my hand. “Through the drainage pipe! Now!”
We scrambled behind the Bordeaux rack, where Daniel wrenched open a heavy iron grate set into the floorboards. A rush of cold, damp air billowed out from the darkness below.
Keller fired three suppressive rounds down the tunnel behind us as the second explosion blew the iron wine racks off the walls in a storm of shattering glass and flying shrapnel.
“Go, go, go!” Keller yelled, diving headfirst into the drainage chute behind us.
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I hauled Hannah through the hatch just as a burst of automatic gunfire chewed up the stone right where we had been standing. I dropped down into the dark, slick concrete pipe behind them, pulling the heavy iron grate shut above us and sliding the security bolt into place.
We slid down the winding concrete chute into the freezing underground runoff current, plunging headfirst into the stormy night beyond the estate's iron gates.
