At 2:17 a.m., a 911 call came in from a 7-year-old girl whose mother had failed to return home. The moment officers entered the pitch-black apartment,

Two minutes earlier, inside Apartment 4B, Officer David Miller was engaged in a fight for his life.

The second blow from Harlan Vance’s sledgehammer had splintered the door frame entirely, ripping the deadbolt free from the dry-rotted pine. Through the gaping hole, a gloved hand had thrust a heavy-caliber semi-automatic, firing three blind rounds into the living room.

Plaster exploded from the hallway wall. A framed drawing Maya had made of her mother and brother shattered, showering the floor with shards of glass.

Miller returned fire twice, drilling two holes through the door at chest height. A roar of rage echoed from the hallway, followed by the heavy thud of a shoulder ramming the door off its remaining hinges.

The door crashed inward.

Harlan Vance stepped into the dark apartment, a hulking silhouette against the hallway’s flickering fluorescent light. He wore a heavy rain poncho over his tactical gear, a 9mm pistol in his right hand, the short-handled sledgehammer in his left. Blood was seeping through the shoulder of his poncho where one of Miller’s rounds had grazed him, but he didn't even flinch. His eyes were dead, fixed entirely on the living room.

"Where is the girl, Miller?" Harlan growled, stepping over the threshold. "Give me Donald’s drive, and I walk out. Nobody else needs to bleed."

"Drop the weapon!" Miller yelled from behind the overturned oak table, his gun leveled at Harlan's chest. "Step back into the hall! Hands where I can see them!"

Harlan smiled—a cold, humorless baring of teeth. "Donald always thought he was smarter than me. Kept his mouth shut during the trial. Thought if he died in that cage, Elena and the brats would get to spend the seven million." He raised the pistol. "The Mercer name dies tonight."

Harlan fired.

The bullet tore through the oak table, chipping wood into Miller’s cheek. Miller fired back, but Harlan dove behind the partition wall separating the kitchen, his sledgehammer swinging wildly and smashing into the drywall.

In the bathroom down the hall, Toby began to scream. A high, terrified shriek of a two-year-old who knew terror was in the room.

Harlan’s head snapped toward the sound. "Found you."

He turned away from Miller, abandoning cover to sprint down the narrow hallway toward the bathroom door.

"No!" Miller scrambled out from behind the table, but his foot caught on the fallen television cord. He went down hard on his knee, his weapon skidding across the linoleum floor.

Harlan reached the bathroom door. He raised the sledgehammer, muscles knotting in his massive back as he prepared to bring the ten-pound iron head down on the thin lock.

*CRASH.*

The bedroom window at the end of the hall shattered inward in an explosion of rain, wind, and safety glass.