Chapter 55 - Shadows in the Timber
Tyler was alive. The sound of his defiance ignited an electric surge through my veins, but the terror only deepened. If Tyler was yelling, it meant whoever had fired the round had already crossed the threshold into the workshop.
I pressed myself against the damp cedar siding of the barn's western wall, inching toward the side service door. The truck's halogen beams cut through the driving sheets of rain, backlighting the main bay doors with blinding intensity. Inside, the massive wooden framing cast sprawling, cage-like shadows across the machinery.
"You always were too loud for your own good, boy," a raspy, gravel-laden voice cut through the hum of the idling engine outside. It wasn't Thomas’s smooth, cultured purr, nor was it the venomous hiss of Denise. It was rougher, scarred by years of hard living and colder skies. "Put the wrench down. You know who sent me. You know what's in the lockbox they dragged out of the shoals."
"You touched my perimeter," Tyler growled, his voice shifting slightly, echoing as if he were moving behind the heavy industrial planer. "You put a round through my roof while my four-year-old was standing on this floor. You think you're walking out of here with paperwork?"
Maeve. Where was Maeve? My chest seized. I peered through the narrow crack between the service door's frame and the rough-hewn jamb.
Inside, twenty feet from the entrance, stood a tall, broad-shouldered man clad in dark tactical oilskin, water dripping from the brim of a low-slung cap. In his right hand, angled toward the floor, was a suppressed semi-automatic rifle. In his left was a heavy leather satchel bearing the unmistakable brass insignia of the Old World trusts Denise had spent twenty years trying to hide from the federal prosecutors.
And then I saw her. Tucked inside the reinforced cabinet beneath Tyler’s master lathe, half-concealed by heavy burlap drop cloths, a tiny pair of yellow plastic safety goggles caught the beam of the truck’s light. Maeve was curled into a tight ball, her hands clamped over her ears, her chest heaving, obeying the golden rule Tyler had taught her: *If the big noise comes, you hide in the iron box until Daddy taps the wood.*
The intruder stepped forward, his boots crunching over the wood shavings. "The old woman didn't die broke in that cell, Tyler. And Thomas didn't drown to let you play carpenter on a hill while seventy million in bearer bonds sits frozen under the Swiss registry. The girl’s birth certificate has the dual endorsement. All we need is the child's thumbprint on the foreign notarization, and the bank releases the secondary trust."
"Over my dead body," Tyler snapped.
May you like
"That can be arranged very cleanly," the man said, raising the rifle to his shoulder.
I didn't think. I kicked the service door open with everything I had. The heavy wood swung wide, cracking hard against the wall studs. "Get your hands off my family!" I screamed, lunging through the doorway, brandishing the heavy cast-iron fireplace poker with both hands.
