Chapter 16 - Fire in the Oak Grove
"Ben!" I roared, bursting out of Ella’s bedroom into the hallway. "Call nine-one-one! The studio is on fire!"
Ben scrambled out of the study, taking the stairs three at a time, his phone already glued to his ear. "I’m on it! Sensors picked up a heat spike ten seconds ago!"
"Stay with Ella!" I commanded Rachel, grabbing her shoulders firmly. "Do not leave this house! Lock the heavy oak doors from the inside!"
"Mark, the journal—" Rachel sobbed, terror seizing her features.
"I'm getting the journal!" I promised her.
I sprinted down the back stairs, yanked open the utility closet, grabbed the heavy iron crowbar and a commercial fire extinguisher, and threw open the back door into the night.
The summer night air was thick with smoke and the roaring crackle of seasoned wood burning violently. The eastern end of Rachel’s wooden studio was already engulfed in forty-foot orange flames, lighting up the ancient oak canopy like a hellish sunrise.
At the fence line, the four private security guards were standing by their black SUVs, completely motionless, watching the building burn without raising a finger or calling the fire department.
"Hey!" I screamed, sprinting across the lawn, holding the iron crowbar high. "Help me put it out!"
Captain Miller, the barrel-chested guard, stepped up to the chain-link fence, his face illuminated by the firelight. He held a cold, arrogant expression.
"This is private trust property, Mr. Henderson," Miller said calmly over the roar of the flames. "You are not permitted to cross this line. Back off."
"There’s a dangerous chemical fire thirty feet from my home!" I raged, slamming the iron crowbar against the heavy chain-link fence, the metallic CLANG echoing through the valley. "Open this gate!"
"We’ve reported a controlled agricultural burn to county dispatch," Miller lied smoothly. "Step away from the perimeter, or my men will use non-lethal force to detain you."
Behind him, through the thick smoke drifting across the studio porch, I saw a silhouette step out from the side door of the burning building.
It was a woman wearing a heavy dark jacket, her face covered by a surgical mask, holding a black leather satchel close to her chest.
Caroline.
She had used Eleanor’s security detail as a human wall, snuck through the woods behind the studio, broken into the floor safe, set the fire to destroy any remaining evidence, and was now walking away with her father's original journals.
Our eyes locked through the black privacy mesh and the rising smoke.
Caroline smiled behind her mask—a cold, insane flash of eyes that communicated absolute, sociopathic victory. She turned to walk toward the waiting SUV parked deep in the woods.
A terrifying rage, pure and unadulterated, exploded in my chest.
I didn't try to unlock the gate. I didn't argue with the security guards.
I turned around, sprinted twenty yards back toward the barn, and threw open the heavy doors of Ben’s commercial John Deere tractor—a forty-ton piece of heavy industrial machinery equipped with a front-end steel loader.
I threw the diesel engine into gear. The massive engine roared to life, coughing black exhaust into the sky.
"Mark! No!" Ben screamed from the back porch, waving his arms frantically. "You’ll get arrested!"
"They have the journal, Ben!" I shouted over the thunder of the tractor.
I slammed the hand throttle forward. The massive steel tires tore through the manicured lawn, accelerating the forty-ton beast straight toward the eight-foot chain-link fence.
Captain Miller’s eyes went wide with sudden, blinding terror as he realized what was coming. "Fall back! Move!" he screamed, diving out of the way.
CRASH!
The heavy steel loader hit the iron fence posts at twenty miles an hour. Iron wire snapped like violin strings. Steel posts buckled under forty tons of hydraulic momentum. The entire eight-foot fence and the privacy tarp were ripped out of the earth, crushed beneath the massive rubber tires as the tractor crashed straight onto Eleanor’s disputed land.
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I slammed the brakes, dropped the loader bucket, threw the tractor into park, and jumped down into the burning brush, holding the iron crowbar like a spear.
"Caroline!" I roared into the smoke and fire. "STOP!"
