Chapter 5 - The Glass Castle
The Wolfe estate was built like a medieval fortress, occupying fifty acres of prime forested hilltop overlooking the valley. It was surrounded by an eight-foot wrought-iron fence, thirty-two motion-sensing security cameras, and a team of six private guards patrolling the perimeter with trained Belgian Malinois dogs.
To an ordinary observer, it was an impenetrable sanctuary.
To a man trained in asymmetric warfare, it was an oversized target with dozens of blind spots.
At 11:00 PM, I lay prone in the thick pine needles thirty yards outside the eastern fence line. I was wearing an all-black thermal suit that masked my body heat from the infrared cameras mounted on the stone pillars.
Through my night-vision monocular, I watched the guard rotation.
Two men every forty-five minutes. They were sloppy. They relied too heavily on the dogs and the cameras, skipping the wooded eastern quadrant whenever the temperature dropped below freezing.
My phone buzzed against my chest.
Mason: [Dominic left twenty minutes ago. He took four guys with him. He's going to the downtown office to burn the paper records before the feds execute a search warrant.]
Jack: [Is your father in the library?]
Mason: [Yes. He's alone. Tristan and Julian are at the hospital covering the night shift in case you try to visit your wife.]
I closed the phone, slipped my wire-cutters from my belt, and moved to the fence.
Cutting through the heavy iron mesh took ninety seconds. I slipped through the gap, stepping silently over the damp leaves, and glided toward the rear of the manor.
The house was built of heavy limestone and reinforced glass. I bypassed the patio doors—which were hardwired into the main alarm system—and climbed the heavy stone trellis leading to the second-floor balcony off the study. The lock on the French doors was a standard double-cylinder deadbolt. Using a thin piece of spring steel and a tension wrench, I opened it in four seconds flat.
I stepped into the dim, carpeted hallway of the second floor.
The air inside smelled of beeswax, expensive tobacco, and mahogany. Oil paintings of previous generations of Wolfe men lined the walls—stern, arrogant faces staring down at a world they believed they owned.
I moved down the grand staircase, my boots making no sound on the thick oriental runner, until I stood outside the heavy oak doors of the main library.
A line of warm yellow light shone beneath the wood.
I opened the door without knocking and stepped inside.
Victor Wolfe was sitting behind a massive carved desk, an antique crystal glass of cognac in his hand, reading a stack of legal documents under the light of a green banker's lamp. He was sixty-five years old, with silver hair brushed neatly back and eyes like flint.
When he heard the door open, he didn't look up immediately. "I told you to leave me alone, Mason. If you're going to cry about your allowance again—"
"Mason isn't here, Victor," I said, closing the door behind me and turning the brass lock key.
Victor’s hand froze mid-air.
He slowly looked up. The green light cast harsh shadows across his face, accentuating the deep lines around his mouth. For a fraction of a second, his eyes flickered with genuine surprise, but he mastered his expression instantly, setting his cognac glass down on the blotter with cold deliberation.
"Sergeant Mercer," Victor said, his tone shockingly mild. "I must admit, your ability to trespass on private property is impressive. But you're in over your head. You break into my home, you give me the legal right to put a bullet in your chest."
His right hand drifted slowly toward the top drawer of his desk.
"Go ahead and open it," I said, standing twenty feet away, my arms hanging loosely at my sides. "You have a Kimber .45 in that drawer. Custom grip, hair trigger. But you're sixty-five years old, Victor. Your reaction time is 0.4 seconds. Mine is 0.15. Before your fingers touch that steel, I will break your throat."
Victor's hand paused an inch from the drawer handle. He looked into my eyes, searching for a bluff, a tremor, a single grain of hesitation.
He found none.
Slowly, Victor withdrew his hand and leaned back in his leather chair, steepling his fingers together.
"What do you want, Jack?" Victor asked. "Money? A multi-million dollar settlement for your wife's medical bills? A quiet transfer out of the state with a comfortable pension? Name a number. Everyone has a number."
I walked slowly across the room, stopping right in front of his desk. I leaned down, placing both palms flat on the mahogany surface, bringing my face three inches from his.
"Tessa's medical bills are being paid by my military health insurance," I said softly. "I don't want your filthy money, Victor. I came here to give you a message."
"A message?" Victor scoffed, though a drop of sweat was beginning to form at his hairline.
"Your docks were seized six hours ago," I whispered. "Your eldest son, Dominic, is currently driving straight into a federal trap at your downtown headquarters. Your youngest son, Mason, has given me three hours of audio recordings detailing every extortion scheme your family has run for the last decade."
Victor's eyes widened in horror. "Mason... Mason wouldn't—"
"Mason broke the second I looked at him in that hospital hallway," I corrected him mercilessly. "Because he knew what you are, Victor. You're not a king. You're a coward who hides behind seven sons and a wall of hired guns."
I reached out, took his crystal glass of cognac, and slowly tipped it over, pouring the dark liquid across his stack of legal documents.
"You took thirty-one bone fractures out on my wife's body," I told him as the amber alcohol soaked through his papers. "I'm going to take thirty-one pieces of your life away from you. One by one. Day by day. Until you have nothing left except an empty house and a prison cell."
I turned toward the balcony door.
"Jack!" Victor roared, his face flushed with sudden, desperate rage. He slammed his fist onto the desk. "You think you can beat us?! I have six other sons! I have fifty men! I will have your wife killed in her hospital bed tonight!"
I stopped at the balcony door, looking back over my shoulder.
May you like
"If anyone so much as looks at Tessa's room," I said, my voice cold enough to freeze blood, "I won't send the feds next time. I'll come back myself. And I won't bring a phone."
I stepped out into the night fog and vanished into the trees.
