Chapter 5 - The Siege of Holloway Manor
The intercom clicked off with a static pop, leaving the dark hallway in dead silence save for the low, rhythmic hum of the emergency lights along the baseboards.
In my arms, the real Victoria stiffened, her cold hands clutching my lapels. "Ethan... the safe room... she means it. Veronica set fire to our nanny's house when we were teenagers just to kill a stray dog she hated. She has no human empathy."
"She isn't getting near my kids," I said through gritted teeth.
I quickly carried Victoria into the secondary pantry off the kitchen, setting her down gently behind a stack of heavy dry-goods crates. I pulled the silver compact pistol from my waistband, checked the magazine—six rounds of 9mm ammunition—and racked the slide, chambering a round.
I pulled a tactical flashlight and a spare utility knife from my belt, handing them to her. "Stay here. The door locks from the inside. If anyone other than me tries to open this, use the knife."
"Ethan, be careful," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Damian's security detail... they aren't normal guards. They're private contractors he uses for illegal enforcement."
I nodded once, slipped out of the pantry, and moved quietly down the darkened hallway toward the main foyer.
The house had become a battleground. Flashlight beams cut through the gloom near the front entrance. I could hear heavy combat boots crunching over the broken glass of the front sidelights.
Three men in tactical gear were entering the foyer, carrying short-barreled carbines. Standing behind them was Damian Reed, his broken wrist bound in a makeshift sling, his face twisted in rage.
"Find him!" Damian hissed to the mercenaries. "Search the main floor! Secure the kids in the safe room first—we use them as leverage if Holloway tries to play hero!"
Where was Veronica?
I pressed myself flat against the shadow of the dining room archway. One of the mercenaries began moving down the corridor toward my position, his weapon raised, the tactical light on his rifle sweeping the walls.
Ten feet. Eight feet. Five feet.
The moment he rounded the archway, I reached out, grabbed the barrel of his rifle, and jammed it upward into the ceiling. The weapon discharged with a deafening roar, blowing a hole through the plaster overhead.
Before he could recover, I drove my right elbow hard into his throat. He gagged, dropping the rifle. I caught it, spun him around as a human shield, and fired three rounds from my pistol into the second contractor advancing through the foyer. The second man went down with a heavy thud.
The third mercenary fired a burst toward my position, bullets splintering the antique dining table and shattering the glass cabinets behind me. I dropped low, dragging the unconscious contractor behind the heavy oak door.
"Holloway!" Damian's voice echoed from the staircase landing above. "You can't win this! The local sheriff's department is twenty minutes away, and by the time they get here, we'll have the kids and be on a private helicopter out of the county!"
"You aren't taking my children anywhere, Reed!" I shouted back, ejecting the empty magazine from my pistol and slamming a fresh one home.
Suddenly, a loud bang echoed from the rear of the house, followed by the terrifying sound of heavy iron scraping against concrete.
The safe room.
They weren't trying to breach the door from the hallway. Veronica was using the secondary maintenance hatch in the back utility room to get inside.
I didn't think. I sprinted through the darkness of the service kitchen, ignoring the gunfire that splintered the doorframe behind me.
I burst into the utility room just in time to see Veronica holding a heavy industrial blowtorch, bright blue flames roaring against the steel hinges of the emergency access hatch.
Beside her, Olivia was lying unconscious on the floor, bleeding from a knot on her forehead.
"Veronica!" I yelled, bringing the pistol up.
May you like
She turned instantly, a psychotic grin stretching across her face in the harsh blue light of the torch. But she didn't draw a gun. Instead, she held up a small, red detonator switch with a plastic safety guard flipped open.
"Go ahead, Ethan! Shoot me!" she shrieked, her voice echoing wildly in the small utility room. "Shoot me and my thumb relaxes on this dead-man switch! I've placed four charges of commercial thermite around the structural supports of the safe room! If I die, your precious little triplets get incinerated in five seconds!"
