Chapter 4: The Fire on the Ridge
“Get in the floor storage,” Arthur ordered, his voice cutting through the panic like a blade.
He didn't wait for me to move. He ripped up a heavy braided rug in the center of the cabin, revealing a wooden trapdoor that led to an old root cellar beneath the floorboards. It was dark, damp, and smelled of dirt and rotting potatoes.
“Arthur, come with us!” I begged, pushing Lily down into the small, ladder-lined hole.
“The shotgun will only buy me ten seconds against corporate mercenaries, Mara,” Arthur said, a strange, calm smile touching his weathered face for the first time. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, metallic flash drive, pressing it into my palm. “This is the encryption key to Derek’s offshore accounts. I spent five years cracking it from the old server backups. I couldn't use it because I didn't have the secondary verification code—the code that’s generated by the primary home security router in your Brookhaven house.”
He pushed me down into the hole, his eyes fierce. “If you survive tonight, you find a way to get that code. You ruin him, Mara. You ruin him for what he did to my life, and what he tried to do to yours.”
He slammed the trapdoor shut above my head. The darkness was absolute.
I pulled Lily close to my chest, my arms wrapped around her small frame, my hand cupping her mouth to muffle her breathing. We crouched in the dirt, the cold moisture of the earth seeping through my leggings.
Above us, the cabin floorboards groaned.
A loud, shattering crash echoed through the darkness as the front door was kicked off its hinges.
“Where are they, Vance?” a cold, professional voice shouted. It wasn't Derek. It was a man with a thick, flat military accent.
“You’re trespassing on private property, son,” Arthur’s voice rang out, steady and defiant. “And I’ve got twelve gauges of lead that say you’re not leaving vertical.”
A deafening BANG shook the floorboards—Arthur had fired the shotgun.
But it was instantly answered by a rapid, metallic chatter—the sound of suppressed automatic weapons. The noise was terrifyingly quiet, like a handful of gravel thrown against a window pane, but the sound of Arthur’s body hitting the hardwood floor above us was heavy, wet, and final.
“Clear the rooms,” the military voice commanded. “Find the woman and the kid. The boss said the car’s GPS log showed it stopped here two hours ago. They haven't left the mountain.”
Heavy boots stomped directly over our heads. The wooden slats of the trapdoor flexed under the weight of a grown man. I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart hammering so violently I was certain they could hear it through the floor. Lily didn't move. She didn't cry. She was as still as a stone statue in my arms.
“Sir!” another voice called out from the kitchen area. “There’s a gas canister hooked to the wood stove. The old man was trying to rig a fire.”
“Let it burn,” the commander said. “If the bodies are in the woods, the local volunteer fire department won't look too close at the ashes here. We set the ridge on fire, it covers the tracks. Let’s go.”
The boots moved away toward the door.
A moment later, a sharp, chemical smell began to seep through the cracks of the trapdoor. It wasn't woodsmoke. It was the pungent, suffocating scent of accelerating propane.
They’re burning the cabin, my mind screamed.
Above us, a low, roaring WHOOSH signaled that the gas had ignited. The temperature in the root cellar began to rise instantly, the smoke thick and gray, dropping down through the cracks in the ceiling, stinging my eyes and filling my lungs with poison.
We couldn't stay here. We would suffocate in ten minutes, or the floor would collapse and bury us alive in embers.
“Lily,” I whispered into her ear, my voice cracking from the smoke. “We have to find another way out. Is there a window down here? A hole?”
I crawled through the dirt, my hands scraping against rough stones and old wooden support beams. The smoke was getting thicker, turning the darkness into a choking gray soup.
My fingers hit a rusty metal grate at the back wall of the cellar—a small ventilation shaft designed to let air into the root storage. It was covered in thick cobwebs and dirt, but through the iron bars, I could see the cold, blue light of the West Virginia night.
I grabbed the metal tire gauge from my pocket, shoving the sharp edge into the rotting mortar around the grate. I pried with everything I had, my muscles screaming from the effort, my breath coming in short, painful gasps.
The mortar crumbled. The grate shifted.
With one final, desperate heave, I kicked the iron bars outward. They fell into the wet leaves outside with a soft thud.
“Go, Lily! Crawl!” I choked out, pushing her through the narrow, mud-slick opening.
She wiggled through the hole like a rabbit, her oversized hoodie scraping against the stones. I scrambled after her, the heat from the ceiling now so intense that the hair on the back of my neck was beginning to singe. I squeezed my hips through the tight space, the sharp rocks cutting into my waist, until I tumbled out into the cold, wet grass beneath the cabin’s foundation.
Above us, the cabin was a roaring tower of orange flame, the sparks flying up into the dark pine trees like angry hornets.
The armored SUV was gone—the mercenaries had already driven down the ridge, believing their fire would do the work for them.
I pulled Lily into the shadow of the thick brush, the heat of the fire at our backs, the freezing rain washing the soot from our faces. We were alive. But we had no car, no food, and the man who wanted us dead had just burned our only ally to ash.
I looked down at the flash drive in my hand, my fingers tightening until the metal edges bit into my skin.
May you like
The home security router, Arthur had said. The secondary verification code.
To kill the monster, I had to walk right back into his mouth. We had to go back to Brookhaven.
