Chapter 8 - The Lakehouse of Shadows
The storm was a howling monster of white ice and screaming wind.
The heavy diesel engine ploughed through four-foot drifts, sparks flying from the steel rails, grinding to a halt on the abandoned industrial siding two miles east of my old farmstead.
Detective Reed, four heavily armed state tactical officers in winter camouflage, and I dropped from the train into waist-deep snow, the wind instantly cutting through our wool and Gore-Tex layers.
"Thermal scopes show movement in the main timber barn," the tactical sergeant whispered over the team’s encrypted radio, peering through a high-magnification monocular. "Two heat signatures on perimeter patrol. One stationary heat signature inside the hayloft—likely Victoria Sterling packing the crates."
"Where is the helicopter coming from?" Reed asked, pulling up his rifle.
"Out of Dubuque, flying low beneath radar over the Mississippi River," the sergeant replied. "ETA twenty-two minutes. If we don't breach and neutralize the perimeter in fifteen, she’s gone."
"The front approach is an open meadow," I whispered, pointing through the swirling snow toward the dark silhouette of the century-old barn. "They’ll spot you from the hayloft door fifty yards out. But the old root cellar behind the main house connects to the lower barn foundation through a brick drainage tunnel built during the Civil War. It leads right beneath the livestock stalls."
The sergeant looked at Reed, nodding sharply. "Lead the way, Mrs. Sterling. Stay low, stay behind me."
We moved like ghosts through the frozen timber, the screaming gale masking the crunch of our snowshoes. We slipped through the broken bulkhead of the farmhouse root cellar, stepping into the damp, subterranean tunnel.
Water dripped from ancient brick arches. The air was heavy with the smell of iron and centuries-old earth. We crept forward in single file, flashlights masked in crimson filters, until we reached the vertical wooden ladder leading up into the barn's floorboards.
Above us, the sound of heavy boots echoed on wood, accompanied by the metallic clink of crowbars and the harsh, furious voice of Victoria Sterling.
"Hurry up, you idiot!" she snarled. "The transponder says the pilot is crossing the river ridge! Pack the remaining gold bars into the duffel bags!"
"We’re moving as fast as we can, lady," a gruff male voice grunted. "These crates weigh eighty pounds each. You want the bearer bonds or the bullion?"
"I want everything!" she shrieked. "I lost forty million dollars because of that interfering old bitch and her sniveling brat! I am not leaving a single ounce of gold behind!"
I gripped the rungs of the ladder, my knuckles turning white, pure adrenaline drowning out the cold in my bones.
"Breach on three," the tactical sergeant signaled with his fingers.
*One. Two. Three.*
The officers kicked open the floor hatch and swarmed up into the barn with blinding weapon-mounted strobes.
"State Police! Drop your weapons! On the ground! On the ground now!"
Chaos erupted.
The first mercenary, standing near the hayloft winch, raised an automatic rifle, but the tactical team fired instantly. Two suppressed cracks dropped him into the straw before he could pull the trigger.
The second mercenary threw his hands in the air, falling to his knees beside the open crate of gold bullion. "I surrender! Don't shoot! I surrender!"
"Victoria! Freeze!" Reed roared, sweeping his rifle toward the upper hayloft.
A figure darted from behind a stack of hay bales—not toward the ladder, but toward the open hayloft loading door that looked out over the sheer, eighty-foot limestone cliff dropping down into the raging, ice-choked waters of the Galena River.
Victoria stood in the open doorway, framed against the howling vortex of the blizzard.
Her expensive fur coat was spattered with mud, her hair wild and tangled by the freezing wind. In her arms, she clutched two heavy canvas bags stuffed with bearer bonds and gold bullion.
Through the whiteout behind her, the heavy, rhythmic thumping of helicopter rotors shook the air as a black, unmarked chopper hovered fifty feet above the cliff edge, its searchlight cutting through the snow, illuminating Victoria like an actress on a doomed stage.
"Victoria! Step away from the ledge!" Reed shouted, advancing slowly across the hayloft, his weapon trained on her chest. "It's over! Put the bags down!"
Victoria looked at Reed, then her crazed, bloodshot eyes locked onto me as I climbed up into the hayloft.
Her face twisted into an expression of unadulterated, psychotic hatred.
"You," she hissed, her voice carrying over the roar of the helicopter blades. "You ruined my life! I had everything! I had the status, the family, the wealth! You were supposed to be a broken, weeping old woman burying her grandchild!"
"You were going to burn her alive, Victoria," I said, stepping forward, unyielding, my voice cutting through the wind like a steel blade. "You were going to burn your own flesh and blood for paper and metal."
"She was never my daughter!" Victoria screamed, tears of pure rage freezing on her cheeks. "She was Pendelton’s pet! She looked at me with his eyes! She judged me just like he did! She deserved that box!"
"Drop the bags and put your hands up, Victoria!" Reed ordered, taking another step. "This is your final warning!"
The helicopter dropped a heavy steel retrieval cable, the harness swinging violently in the gale just ten feet from the hayloft opening.
Victoria laughed—a shrill, manic sound that was swallowed by the storm.
"I will never spend a single day in a cage!" she shrieked.
She turned and leaped toward the swinging cable, reaching out with both hands, refusing to let go of the heavy canvas bags of gold that weighed down her arms.
Her gloved fingers caught the steel cable. For half a second, it seemed she might hook the carabiner.
Then, the brutal, sixty-mile-per-hour crosswind slammed into the helicopter, forcing the aircraft to bank violently away from the cliff face.
The cable whipped sideways.
The sheer weight of the twelve million dollars in gold bullion dragged Victoria’s arms down. Her grip slipped against the iced steel.
"Victoria! Let go of the bags!" Reed screamed, lunging toward the ledge.
Greed is a disease that rots the brain until the very end. Even as she hung suspended over the eighty-foot abyss of jagged limestone and freezing rapids, Victoria refused to open her fingers. She clutched the gold to her chest as if metal could save her soul.
Her frozen gloves lost their purchase.
A single, piercing shriek cut through the blizzard—a sound devoid of humanity, full of terror and denied vanity—before Victoria Sterling vanished into the white abyss below.
Seconds later, a distant, hollow splash was swallowed completely by the roaring blizzard and the thumping retreat of the panicked helicopter fleeing into the night.
Reed reached the edge, looking down into the darkness. He shone his tactical light into the churning, icy torrent below.
There was nothing. Only black water, crushing ice floes, and seventy feet of freezing foam.
Reed slowly lowered his weapon, turning back to look at me through the swirling snow.
"She's gone, Evelyn."
I stood in the center of the dark barn, the wind howling through the timbers, and closed my eyes.
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The nightmare that had begun over a velvet-lined casket in a silent living room had finally plunged into the freezing depths of the earth.
***
