Chapter 8 - The Turning PointMy mind raced. Three minutes. Every instinct screamed to protect my family, to give Vance whatever he wanted just to make the nightmare stop. But I looked at my father—the man who had faked his own death, lied to protect us, and carried the weight of a secret war for half my life—and I realized something fundamental.
Vance wasn't going to let any of us walk out of this basement. The bomb wasn't just an EMP; it was a cleanup crew.
"You want the server?" I asked, lowering the iron poker slowly as if surrendering.
Vance smiled, lowering his gun by a fraction of an inch, blinded by his own arrogance. "Smart boy. Just point to the hard drive."
"It's right behind you," I whispered.
Vance frowned, starting to turn his head toward the shelving unit.
That fraction of a second was all Agent Miller needed. With blinding speed, she didn't aim for Vance—she fired low, shattering the digital timer on the shelf into a shower of plastic and electrical sparks.
At the same time, I lunged forward, tackling Vance around the waist and driving him hard into the concrete floor, knocking the pistol from his hand.
"It's a dummy timer!" Miller shouted over the sudden shrieking alarm of the shorted-out device. "There's no cardiac kill-switch! He was bluffing!"
Raymond straightened up immediately, the color returning to his face as he leveled his rifle at Vance, who was thrashing beneath me on the floor.
"You arrogant bastard," my father snarled, kicking Vance’s sidearm across the room.
Within seconds, Miller had zip-tied Vance’s hands behind his back while I rushed to Celeste and the kids, tearing the duct tape from their mouths and slicing through their bonds with a pocketknife.
"Daddy!" Maya sobbed, throwing her arms around my neck so hard I almost lost my balance. Leo buried his face in my shoulder, shaking uncontrollably. Celeste pulled us all into a tight, desperate embrace, tears soaking my shirt.
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"It's over," I whispered, holding them close while looking across the room at my father and the federal agent standing over a defeated Arthur Vance. "It's finally over."
Or so I thought.
