Chapter 6 - THE SAFE HOUSEThe rain was lashing down in sheets when we finally crawled out of the drainage pipe, emerging into the overgrown weeds of an abandoned railway siding three miles outside the estate perimeter.
Shivering, soaked to the bone, and catching our breath, we huddled beneath the rusted metal overhang of an old loading dock.
Hannah pulled Lily close, wrapping her in her own damp jacket. The little girl was exhausted, her eyes drooping heavy, but she still clutched the mutilated rabbit in her small arms.
“We’re safe here for tonight,” Daniel said, scanning the dark tree line with the caution of a hunted animal. He pulled a small, battery-powered lantern from a crevice in the wall and clicked it on, casting a warm, flickering yellow light across our battered group.
Keller knelt by a puddle, checking his weapon and wiping down the slide. “We need supplies, encrypted comms, and clean clothes. If we’re going to pull off a infiltration at your own wedding, Grant, we need to move like ghosts.”
“I have a contact,” I said, wiping rain from my forehead. “Marcus Vance—my cousin. He was kicked off the board of directors last year after he questioned my father’s offshore accounts. If anyone in my family is still alive and hates my father as much as we do, it’s Marcus.”
Daniel nodded slowly. “Can we trust him?”
“We don’t have a choice,” I replied. “He lives in a converted grain silo on the north side of the lake. Unmonitored by the estate’s network.”
Using a burner phone Daniel had salvaged from his stash, I dialed Marcus’s private number. It rang three times before a gruff, paranoid voice answered.
“State your name and the day your grandfather died.”
“Marcus, it’s Grant. Grandfather died on October twelfth.”
A sharp intake of breath on the other line. “Grant? The word on the street is that you’re locked inside the mansion preparing for your wedding of the century with the little devil Audrey Sinclair.”
“The wedding is a trap, Marcus. They murdered my mother, they tried to frame Hannah, and they’ve been running a multi-million-dollar embezzlement ring over dead bodies. I need your help.”
Silence stretched over the line for a long, agonizing moment.
Then, Marcus let out a dark, resolute chuckle. “I’ve been waiting two years to stick a knife in my uncle’s back. Get to the silo. I’ll leave the side door unlocked.”
Two hours later, we stepped inside Marcus’s fortified sanctuary.
The converted grain silo was an underground fortress of high-tech monitors, server racks, and weapons lockers. Marcus—a burly man with a thick red beard and cynical eyes—met us at the airlock, handing us dry towels, hot coffee, and military-grade rations.
“Jesus Christ, Daniel,” Marcus whistled, staring at the man who had risen from the dead. “Word was you turned into charcoal in that warehouse.”
“Turns out industrial fire insurance pays better when you’re not actually inside the building,” Daniel dryly remarked, accepting a mug of black coffee from Hannah.
Keller walked over to Marcus’s main server bank and plugged in the micro-drive we had extracted from the rabbit.
Lines of green code scrolled across six massive widescreen monitors mounted on the wall.
“Alright, let’s see what else your old man hid in here,” Marcus muttered, pulling up the primary database.
Files began to unlock automatically as the encryption keys from the rabbit matched the master directory. Financial transfers, offshore shell companies, wire receipts, and encrypted video logs flooded the screens.
But it was a single video file dated six months ago—the day my mother died—that made all the blood in my veins freeze solid.
Marcus clicked play.
The video showed my mother’s luxury sedan parked on the edge of the coastal cliff road.
A sleek black SUV pulled up behind her. Two masked figures stepped out.
One of them wasn't a hired gun.
The camera angle shifted as the figure stepped directly into the dashboard light, pulling down their ski mask.
It was my father.
And standing right beside him, handing him the electronic remote detonator that would override my mother’s brakes, was Audrey Sinclair.
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My stomach churned with a sickening wave of nausea. The woman I was being forced to marry—the woman who smiled sweetly at me across dinner tables—was a cold-blooded murderer who had personally helped my father kill my mother.
And the wedding was only four days away.
