Chapter 15 - The Traitor's Choice
Ten miles away, a police convoy led by Detective Rowan Walsh was tearing through the rain-soaked streets of Nashville at ninety miles per hour.
In the backseat of Walsh's lead cruiser sat Reid Whitmore. He was wearing his orange jumpsuit, handcuffed at his wrists and ankles, his face pale with desperation.
"She’s going to use the maintenance ventilation bypass!" Reid yelled over the roar of the siren. "Evelyn installed a manual override valve behind the wine cellar wall when the house was built! It bypasses the safe room filtration filters!"
Detective Walsh glanced at him in the rearview mirror. "If you're lying to me, Reid, I will make sure you spend the rest of your sentence in solitary confinement."
"I’m not lying!" Reid sobbed, clutching his handcuffed hands together. "Please! Just save Mara! Save my babies! I don't care what happens to me!"
At the estate, thick black smoke began pouring into the safe room through the upper air vents.
The carbon monoxide detectors screamed instantly with high-pitched electronic beeps.
"Filter breached!" Marcus yelled, coughing violently as he tried to seal the vents with thermal tape. "Mrs. Thorne! Put on this oxygen mask!"
I grabbed the mask, placing it over my mouth, but my vision was already beginning to blur. The air felt heavy, suffocating. My babies were kicking wildly, gasping for life inside my womb.
No, I thought, tears burning my eyes. Not again. I am not losing them again!
"Marcus," I choked out through the mask, pulling a heavy steel emergency crowbar from the bunker supply crate. "We aren't dying in this box. Open the door."
"Mrs. Thorne, there are heavily armed men out there!"
"If we stay in here, we die in five minutes!" I commanded, my eyes flashing with unyielding authority. "Open the door!"
Marcus nodded grimly. He keyed the manual release code into the door lock. The heavy steel pins retracted with a loud pneumatic CLANG.
As the door slid open, Marcus and the second guard stepped out into the smoke-filled hallway, guns blazing. Gunfire erupted into the darkness—deafening flashes of muzzle fire illuminating the grand foyer.
I slipped out behind them, staying low, holding my stomach, navigating through the heavy smoke toward the side exit leading to the garage.
Suddenly, a hand reached out from the shadows and grabbed my throat.
I was slammed violently against the marble wall.
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I looked up through the haze into the cold, dead eyes of Evelyn Whitmore. She was holding a suppressed 9mm pistol in her right hand, her face twisted into a demonic snarl.
"Found you, little girl," Evelyn whispered.
