Chapter 8 - The Decoy
The blinding white glare of four vehicle spotlights hit me like a physical blow.
I stumbled onto the porch, raising one arm to shield my eyes, keeping the shotgun lowered at my side just enough to be visible, exactly as an exhausted, trapped man would.
Rain lashed against my face, washing the tears and gas residue down my cheeks.
“Don't shoot!” I shouted into the rain, my voice cracking with simulated panic. “Don't shoot! I have what you want!”
From behind the blinding light of the lead Suburban, two figures stepped forward into the downpour. They were dressed in black tactical gear, helmets with mounted communication headsets, their rifles raised and leveled dead at my center mass.
Behind them, a tall, broad-shouldered man in an expensive wool trench coat and leather gloves emerged from the backseat of the vehicle.
Richard Sterling.
He was in his late fifties, his silver hair neatly slicked back despite the storm, his face aristocratic, cruel, and completely devoid of empathy. He held a large black umbrella over his head, stepping carefully around the mud puddles as if he were walking across a golf course.
“Leo,” Sterling’s cultured, smooth voice carried over the rumble of the idling engines. “You’ve caused an extraordinary amount of inconvenience for a dead man.”
I kept my head down, letting my wet hair fall over my forehead, leaning heavily against the porch rail.
“The girl isn't here, Sterling,” I yelled back, mimicking the raspy, exhausted tone I had heard from Leo in the cabin. “I sent her away two days ago. She’s across the Canadian border.”
Sterling let out a low, amused chuckle. “Do you really take me for an amateur, Leo? My men tracked your daughter’s scent to the crawlspace in your brother’s suburban home four hours ago. Ryan’s house is currently being searched by the county coroner’s department—or at least, it will be once the fire my men set finishes consuming the evidence.”
My heart stopped. *The fire.*
They had burned my home. Everything Emily and I had built. Lily’s toys, our wedding albums, our sanctuary—all reduced to ash to cover their tracks.
A cold, lethal fury settled into my veins, freezing out the fear.
“Ryan had nothing to do with this,” I said, my knuckles turning white around the shotgun stock concealed behind my leg. “He didn't even know who I was.”
“And that was his tragic misfortune,” Sterling said smoothly, checking an antique gold wristwatch. “Ryan was an acceptable pawn. A clean name to sign the bank transfers. But once you broke into my regional offices and stole that cassette, the whole board had to be wiped clean. Your brother, his lovely wife, that irritating little girl of his... all tragic casualties of a faulty gas line in their basement.”
Sterling raised a gloved hand, signaling the two gunmen.
“Give me the cassette, Leo. And I promise I’ll make your daughter’s transition painless. She’ll never even know what happened.”
“You want the tape?” I yelled, reaching into the pocket of Leo’s canvas jacket and pulling out the small plastic micro-cassette.
Sterling’s eyes locked onto the tape. His posture tightened with greedy anticipation. “Bring it down here. Slowly.”
I took two steps down the porch stairs, the mud sucking at my boots.
“You made one mistake, Sterling,” I said.
Sterling frowned slightly, the umbrella tilting. “And what mistake would that be?”
I raised my head, letting the full glare of the spotlights illuminate my face, brushing the wet hair away from my eyes.
“You thought you were talking to Leo.”
Sterling froze.
His eyes darted from my face down to my neck, where the crescent birthmark was visible—but on the wrong side of the collar than his surveillance files had documented.
“What the—”
“Now, Leo!” I roared.
From the dense hemlock tree line fifty yards to the left of the driveway, the sharp, deafening crack of a hunting rifle shattered the night.
The spotlight on the lead Suburban exploded in a shower of sparks and shattered glass.
Before the gunmen could react, I brought the 12-gauge up and fired twice into the engine block of the second vehicle. The deafening roar of the heavy buckshot tore through the radiator, sending a geyser of white steam and boiling coolant hissing into the air.
“Kill him!” Sterling screamed, dropping his umbrella and diving behind the armored door of his SUV.
Gunfire erupted.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the rain like violent lightning. Rounds chewed through the wooden porch railings behind me, sending splinters exploding in every direction.
May you like
I didn't try to fight. I dropped the empty shotgun, vaulted over the side railing of the porch, and sprinted into the blackness of the ravine, leading the gunfire and the fury directly away from the path where my family was escaping into the deep woods.
***
